


Afterlife

by TheLateNightStoryTeller



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alien Abduction, F/M, Fitzsimmons as a couple, Future AU, It has nothing to do with the episode of the same title
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 54,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLateNightStoryTeller/pseuds/TheLateNightStoryTeller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On what seemed to be a routine trip home, Fitz encounters a strange man who will change everything- even if he doesn't know it yet. When he finally does make it home, he finds that things aren't the way he left them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Saved

**Author's Note:**

> Thank You so much to notapepper for betaing these chapters and providing great suggestions! She knows Fitzsimmons inside and out and writes some really cute/funny fics
> 
> Thanks also to Artesuna for letting me bounce ideas off of her. She has some really in depth knowledge of Fitzsimmons' characters and her story Waking Up is Only the Beginning is an amazing Simmons POV

Fitz sat, flipping his phone back and forth in his hands while he watched the final flights touchdown on the runway of the small airport.

It was late, the sun had set hours ago, but the bright orange lights that left the runway illuminated also blotted out the stars, leaving the sky a hazy black.

He  _felt_ hazy. His back hurt from the long flight and his head was filled with fuzz from lack of sleep. Both of which problems he blamed bitterly on his stupid, uncooperative chair that he had begun to suspect (in the later half of the flight) was actually made of several bricks covered in the thinnest fabric available set up specifically to torment him.

It had been a very long trip.

He'd been looking forward to reaching his own,  _flat_ , bed after only one more short 90 minute flight, but it seemed as if the weather had other plans and, heart heavy, he dialed the number that had been waiting on the tips of his fingers, ready to deliver the bad news.

It didn't surprise him in the least that, when she picked up the phone, she knew why he was calling.

"You've been grounded," she guessed, disappointment dampening her usually cheerful tone.

A hook snagged on his heart and Fitz found himself leaning into the speaker, drawn by the sound of her voice even though he knew that she was, in actuality, hundreds of miles away. His shoulders rose in a weary sigh, worn from an already long day of travel and fiercely missing her warm embrace and the aura of sunshine that haloed around her, even more than he was missing his soft (brick-free) bed _._

"I'm sorry darling it's the storm, it's covering half the… the…" Though she couldn't see, his free hand flew up as he huffed, tired and frustrated. "You know."

"It's covering half the Eastern seaboard," she finished and he could picture her, brow knitted in a frown as she ran her fingers through her hair or rubbed her free palm over the back of her neck. "And it's a  _monster._ You won't be flying for a while." There was a brief pause and her next words were quieter, taught with concern. "You're safe though?"

"We're far enough inland to… uh.. to avoid the worst of it," he assured her. "They're just being… being… uh, overcautious."

"They're following safety protocols," she corrected, though she sounded about as exasperated as he was. "You must be at your wits end, flying all that way only to be stuck at an airport," she fussed. "You should find someplace with an actual bed to sleep on."

That did sound like a good idea, he wasn't going anywhere tonight, the endlessly patient woman at the help desk had made that abundantly clear. However he wasn't ready to hang up just yet.

"How are the Spray-n-Track cartridges coming along?" he asked, hoping to distract her with science so he could keep the conversation rolling, even only a few minutes longer.

She let out a long sigh, scolding but sympathetic. "Fitz _._.."

"I know, I know, I've come up with.. come up with, uh… better than… than that," he said evasively, shoving a fist against his mouth to cover a deep yawn, losing his battle with his own exhaustion.

"Go get some sleep, sweetheart," she urged gently, obviously not fooled.

He sank into his chair, pouting and cursing his stupid, fuzzy head. "I miss you," he told her quietly. "It's been-"

"Four days, five hours and twenty eight- twenty  _nine_ minutes," she finished patiently.

That brought a smile to his face, warmth raising in his chest. "You've been keeping track," he teased.

"Don't sound so smug, I know you have too," she shot back, though her tone was sweetened and soft with affection.

"Four days, five hours, twenty nine minutes and forty three seconds," he answered, smile widening further when he heard her tutt at him.

"Next you'll be counting fractions of a second," she mused.

He shook his head, laughing. "Nah, the information would be… it… it would be inaccurate by the time I could uh… by the time I could…" Another yawn, and he was too late to muffle it this time.

"Bed," she ordered.

"No, actually I was going to say communicate," he joked flatly. "Are you sure it's only been four days?"

"Four days, thirty minutes and fifteen-" she began before she caught herself and groaned at him. "Ugh,  _Fitz."_

He didn't need to see her to know that she was rolling her eyes (but he wished he could see her, rolling her eyes, shaking her head, sighing impatiently, he wasn't going to be picky at this point).

"Alright, alright, I'll go start the hunt for somewhere to stay," he relinquished.

"Someplace close by," she suggested swiftly. "The rain should be coming any minute now and when it does the roads are going to be a mess. You aren't going to want to be out there when  _that_ happens."

"I will," he promised.

"And if you get one of those adjustable mattresses, don't set the setting too low," she reminded him. "I know it seems more comfortable but it's awful for your back, especially after so long sitting upright."

He smiled, pushing back a chuckle as he realized that  _she_ was stalling now. "I know."

"You'll have a good nights rest and tomorrow you'll only have few more hours to fly. We'll be together again in no time at all," she assured him optimistically. She was silent for a moment and he leaned his head against the back of the chair, waiting patiently until her voice filled his ear once more. "And Fitz?"

His eyes had closed on him, but he nodded again, still listening. "Mhmm?"

He could hear her cinnamon-sweet smile in her breath, even before she spoke. "I love you."

The words lit his heart, lifting away some of the dense, weary fog that hung over him.

"I love you too," he answered warmly, nearly nuzzling the tiny phone but catching himself just in time to avoid embarrassment. "I'll be home soon."

/-/-/

The closest hotel had been completely booked and he'd needed make several phone calls from the hard, plastic airport chair, before he finally found one within a reasonable distance.

By the time he'd found a taxi and been given a room, it was already well past midnight and he wondered grumpily what the point of the entire struggle had been if he was only going to be able sleep a few hours.

Then he actually thought about sleeping, even for a bit, on something that  _didn't_ force him to remain vertical, and decided it was worth it.

Halfway down the hall towards the elevator, his phone buzzed and as he scrambled to get it out of his pocket he dropped his trunk, cursing loudly when it toppled onto his foot.

It was the airport, messaging him that he was going to need to wait until 10 am for flights to resume. At least he'd be able to get some sleep but now his foot was throbbing and his trunk was tipped off its wheels.

His shoulders sagged and he plopped heavily down onto the hallway bench, debating whether or not to call Jemma again.

While he weighed the pros and cons, he noticed a man, tall with dark hair, formal clothes and a pair of bright, focused eyes, shuffling towards him from the lobby.

Rather than take the elevator, or move further on to the rooms on the first floor, he eased himself down onto the bench. There was something in the way the man sat purposefully beside him that set Fitz on edge, hinted that something wasn't quite right.

Instinctively, he reached for his phone, his hand moving cautiously towards his pocket, ready to hit the first number on his speed dial, knowing that if he called for it there, help would arrive soon. Whether soon was soon enough wasn't something he wanted to think about, but he wasn't about to go out without a fight.

The man's next words, however, stopped him in his tracks.

"I can save her," he told him flatly, still staring ahead. "She doesn't have to die."

Fitz whipped his head to the side, narrowing his eyes in confusion, his attention captured by the strange, ominous statement, chilled by the clear lack of emotion from its source.

"Who…?" he asked, not understanding. "Who's… who needs saving?"

"The woman you were about to call," he replied, unnervingly calm even as Fitz felt the blood drain out of him.

"Jemma…" he breathed, ice creeping over his heart when the man spoke in unison with him, continuing after he'd fallen into stunned silence.

"Simmons," he supplied easily.

Heart racing, the rest of Fitz's body swiveled towards him and he leaned urgently forward. "What's happening? What's going to happen to her?" he growled.

Head turning slowly, the man's gaze shifted towards him, detached, as if they were discussing a particularly dry topic of conversation. "It hasn't happened yet."

A burning ball of anger rose in Fitz's chest. "Enough games," he warned fiercely. Jemma's life was  _not_ some plaything to be toyed with.

"You are going to take the elevator up to your room," the man told him, ignoring the threat and the searing glare that was now being shot at him. "There are two enemy agents waiting there to capture you- you will fight them, but you will not escape." He spoke with such finality, such certainty it was as if he'd already seen it happen.

"What the hell is this?" Fitz snarled, frightened but rooted firmly in place by the potential danger hanging over Jemma.

"They will take you away, somewhere SHIELD will not find you, not for weeks, and they will torture you day and night to get what they want- most of which you will not give them." His head tilted slightly and he studied him, a spark of curiosity lighting his otherwise blank slate of a face. "Your skin will burn, your bones will break, and for what will seem like much longer than it is, that is all there will be for you."

Fitz swallowed a lump of terror, wondering if this was some sort of trap or if were a warning. But then why not get to the point? Why not simply tell him to run?

"Eventually SHIELD will find you," he went on evenly. "But they won't be able to send anyone, not right away. It will be deemed too dangerous to proceed, but agent Simmons…" He shook his head with a slight look of sympathy, a tiny shred of evidence that he was a human being rather than a soulless robot, which only added to Fitz's fear, churning his stomach unpleasantly. "She knows what they're doing to you, she hears your screams in her head every second you're gone and she doesn't know it but it's more than just her mind playing tricks on her. You are connected in a way neither of you- none of you- understand yet and she will come for you, despite her orders."

He was lying, that was the only explanation, the only one that made any sort of sense and yet… And yet how could he know? How could this stranger know that he worked for SHIELD, about the bond he shared with Jemma?

"She'll make it to where they are keeping you," he predicted, as if it were there in front of them, playing out like a film. "She'll see what's left of you, have just enough time touch the part of your face that is still intact, trying to comfort you." He ran a finger down his own face, past the side of his eye, ending about three quarters of the way to his jaw. "She will be horrified but she is brave- like you- and she'll hide it. She will be lying to you, promising that you will be OK, when she is shot from behind. The bullet will pierce her heart and you will be awake to watch her die."

The statement hit him like a torrent of ice-water and Fitz shook his head roughly, tears stinging his eyes. "No."

"It will be over quickly," he said, a feeble attempt at reassurance. "Her final thought will be that she couldn't save you, that she failed you. And your final thought- several hours later- will be that you couldn't save her, that it was the other way around. It will be the most helpless you've ever felt in your entire life."

"You can't know this," Fitz spat, recoiling away, head still shaking stubbornly as he refused to believe what he was hearing. "None of this… it's… you can't… This is  _insane!_ "

" _I_  can save you," the man told him seriously. "I can spare you the agony and I can spare her death."

He wasn't sure if he believed that either, but if any bit of what he was saying was true Fitz needed to do  _something_ to stop it _._ It crossed his mind that the mysterious stranger might be a gifted, that he had powers beyond their current understanding, that he was trying to help and he took a deep breath, attempting to calm himself.

"How?" he asked. "How can you save us?"

A small smile appeared on the man's lips and he reached into his own pocket, pulling out a, sleek black canister, only a little taller than Fitz's phone. "By taking you away," he answered simply, holding it up so that tip hovered just a few inches in front of his face. "I'm going to spare you from all that misery. A painless exit from a living nightmare."

At that, he pushed down on the top of the canister, spraying a clear mist into the air, that landed gently onto the surface of Fitz's eyes, sinking into them through the membrane and quickly finding a vessel to spread into his bloodstream.

There was no pain, he didn't have the time to blink before it was over and he was gone, in strictest sense of the word, for what seemed like no time at all but was actually much, much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The man with the spraying stuff is based off of a character in the fourth season Fringe episode Making Angels and the line "I'm going to spare you from all that misery, a painless exit from a living nightmare" is a quote from the episode and a reference to the show itself, which I like leaving in my stories.
> 
> I don't actually know if airports will text you in the future, but wouldn't that be cool? (this is only a few years in the future, not too far)
> 
> Also I am about 80% done writing this story at 12 chapters, so it should be updated weekly.


	2. Fruit Flies and Unidentified Slime

It was the late into the night when Fitz awoke, covered in mud and slime and naked as the day he was born, laying in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere.

And he couldn't breathe. There was something lodged in his throat, a great slimy mass of liquid that he hacked up until it spewed out of him. He flipped onto his side, gasping for breath in between spitting out mouthfulls of the repulsive, tasteless substance.

"Dear God… that's… disgusting," he wheezed, his words followed by loud, deep coughing as he attempted to expel the remainder of the snot-like fluid from inside of him.

He rolled onto his back to catch his breath, wiping uselessly at his face in an attempt to get it off. However, to his horror, he found he was completely covered in it, his arms, his legs, his hands, all coated in a thick layer that had mixed with the muddy soil which he was sitting in to create the world's most disgusting slurry.

A wave of nausea rolled over him but his stomach was empty and he managed to push it down. Slowly, the world around him stopped spinning.

When he'd recovered, he lifted his head, taking in the slurry, silvery in the moonlight and difficult to see clearly.

Even so he felt his vacant stomach lurch again.

With a groan, he sat up, pinching his nose (which he regretted immediately because of the unpleasant way the slime squished from his fingers onto his face) and trying to remember what had happened.

The events at the hotel, the man's story, the strange spray that had landed in his eyes, flashed before him and he gasped, scrambling to his feet.

_Jemma_

She was in danger, or would have been... the man said he was going to stop it by… by what? His fists clenched in frustration and this time he was oblivious to the way the slime oozed between his fingers as he fought to retrieve the information from his groggy brain.

At last, it came to him.

_By taking you away._

Was that really the answer? Taking him away and dumping him in someone's field? If this was a rescue it was the worst one he'd ever experienced, and he'd been rescued enough times that he thought that actually meant something.

' _And let's not forget the slime,'_ he thought, turning his attention to his hands which he slowly opened and closed, grimacing as he watched it string out between his fingers and his palm. ' _What the hell even is this and why does being covered in it make anyone safer? Unless the man thought it was so gross it would repel bad guys. Is that his plan? Turning me into Gooey-man?'_

Whatever the reason, he needed to get back, find Jemma, make sure she was safe and then figure out what was going on. (Maybe take a long, hot shower too. Extra soap.)

Which brought up his next concern: his complete lack of anything to cover him up. Besides the fact that he was already starting to shiver, he wasn't looking forward to flagging down a car in his current condition (or knocking on the door of the poor farmer whose property he'd been unceremoniously left on). That would certainly be a surprise.

Jemma needed him though and, clothes or no clothes, he wasn't about to let her down.

He briefly debated attempting to make something out of the cornstalks, but quickly decided it would take too long and, anyway, for all he knew they could be covered in fertilizer or pesticides or even creepy, crawly insects.

Wincing when his feet sank into the mud, he started forward, pushing the cornstalks aside as he made his way towards the road. It was freezing and he almost retched at the way his movements made the slime move across his skin, but fortunately, he had been left close to the edge of the road and it wasn't too far a trek.

Bright lights and the rumble of an engine told him that there was a car, about to speed by, and he picked up the pace. Mud splattering behind him, splashing up his legs, he tore through the field, leaping over the short wooden fence that lined its perimeter and bolting after the car.

"Stop!" he yelled, chest burning and still gritty, making his voice gargle near the end. He coughed but his pace didn't falter. "Stop! Help!"

To his immense relief, the car came to a halt, backing up while Fitz ran towards it.

When he reached it, gasping for breath, and his blood had stopped roaring in his ears, he began to notice the way the gravel had dug into the bottom of his feet, and shifted between them uncomfortably. They throbbed painfully where the little rocks had bombarded them and he couldn't remember a time when he'd missed shoes so much. Or pants, he did his best to cover himself up with his hands, but he still felt ridiculously exposed.

The door opened and a man, maybe a few years younger than he was, stepped out, leaving a hand resting lightly on the door as he took him in, tilting his head and raising his eyebrows questioningly.

"Man, what happened to you?" he wondered, sympathy sounding through his bewilderment. "You lose a bet or something?"

/-/-/

It was getting late and though there were no windows in the large, underground lab, both scientists sensed that the sun was long past set, even before the younger one glanced at her watch, letting out a long, impatient groan.

"How long is this thing suppose to take?" she complained, sinking into her chair and lowering her head onto her arm so she viewed the glass jar, filled with tiny buzzing flies, sideways. "It's been over an hour and all that I've learned is that fruit flies are  _boring_ , which I already knew."

"Science is patience," Jemma informed her easily, with the air of someone who had repeated that exact phrase several times to the person she was speaking to.

She sat upright in her chair, using her index finger to scroll down the screen of her tablet as she read through one of the preliminary articles which had inspired the experiment they were currently undergoing.

The other scientist squirmed in her seat, sitting up to squish her cheeks between her fists as she puffed out a loud breath. "Okay, but like, how long does it take these guys to finish getting it on?"

"Not to worry Pao, they should be finished soon," Jemma said absently. She glanced up briefly from her readings to give her a small, encouraging smile. "Then we can collect the female and set her up in her own jar, a nice quiet space for to lay her eggs."

"Do you really think her babies are going to be able to detect if someone's been brainwashed?" Pao wondered curiously, turning her attention away from the jar to look towards Jemma.

"There have been promising results using their sensory organs to detect cancerous cells," Jemma answered, setting her tablet onto the desk and striding over to where her friend sat. She leaned against the table, crouching to get a better look inside the jar and her voice lit with excitement as she continued. "I believe we can use the same systems to detect neurons which have been altered by brainwashing technology, they emit slightly different levels of metabolic waste than regular neurons and the flies are sensitive enough to detect those differences. They really are fascinating creatures."

"I just hope my sensors are good enough to translate the signal into something  _we_ can understand," Pao mumbled, her shoulders sinking as she breathed out a long sigh. "It's hard to decipher the readings from the flies you haven't modified."

"Which is why I'm hoping  _I've_ successfully ensured this generation's offspring inherit the mutation," she told her, giving her shoulder a quick pat. "Everyone trying something new is bound to hit a few bumps, you just need to keep at it and be patient, and-" Her smile widened as her gaze shifted back to the flies. "And you'll get there eventually," she finished, carefully pulling off lid and scooping the newly mated female into a tiny test tube.

"It took you two long enough," Pao scolded the miniscule flying insects. Crossing her arms at the male as the female was dropped into its new enclosure. "Now I'm only going to have an hour to get ready for the Agent's Ball."

"Oh no, is that tonight?" Jemma gasped, frowning as she finished clicking on the lid. "Pao I'm so sorry, no wonder you were so keen to get out of here. Why didn't you say anything?"

The other girl shrugged, unconcerned. "It's not  _that_ big a deal," she said. Her nail found a piece of tape that had been left stuck to the table and she scratched nervously at it. "Well… yeah, OK, maybe it is a little. I don't know… Is it a big deal?"

Jemma's mouth had curved up in a small, amused smile. "Context please," she requested, sitting back down her desk and swiveling her chair to give Pao her full attention.

"Oh, right, I haven't told you yet have I?" she realized. She pulled out a rolling chair and wheeled it over to sit next to Jemma, plopping down onto it excitedly. "I'm going with Sutty."

"That's wonderful!" Jemma grinned. "You've been talking about asking her for ages now. When-?"

Pao rubbed the back of her neck, chuckling nervously. "Actually, she asked me. Hey, don't look so surprised at that," she complained when Jemma's eyebrows rose.

She held up her hands defensively. "I'm not… I'm not  _surprised._ I'm just… happy. For you." Her hands fell onto her lap and she shot her friend another small smile, though there was a subtle tang of sadness hiding in this one. "Romance is a ride well worth buckling up for."

For all its subtlety, the change in Jemma's demeanor did not go unnoticed. Pao chewed her lip, looking her up and down with concern before rolling her chair a few inches closer.

"You're not going, are you?" she guessed quietly.

Jemma managed to shove up another half-smile before averting her gaze. Her shoulders rose and fell and she shook her head, eyes far away. "I- I have work to do anyway," she told her evasively. "I wanted to read through a few more studies, see if I've missed anything that could speed up our progress."

"I can stay and help," Pao offered.

"And miss out on your date?" Jemma tutted disapprovingly. "No. You go have fun, I'll be fine. It's just a bit of reading." When she continued to stare at her anxiously, Jemma rose to her feet, gathering up her tablet. "Go on. I'll be in my bunk if you need me for anything, but I'm sure it's going to go splendidly."

Pao stood too, rubbing her arm uncomfortably. "Uhh…. Jemma?"

Jemma swiveled around, tilting her head questioningly. "Did you need something?"

"Well…" She shifted from one foot to the other, glancing away. "I know it's not really any of my business… but Skye said…" She took a breath and looked back up. "She said if you're not going to the ball, she wants you to call her."

A groan escaped her and Jemma rolled her eyes. "Of course she did."

"She's worried about you," Pao admitted.

She made a noise somewhere between a squeak and a grunt. "I'm  _fine,_ " she insisted. "I'm just… busy… that's all." She shrugged. "I'm passionate about my work, about science. It's nothing to be concerned about. I'll still call her," she added quickly when Pao opened her mouth to protest. "There's no need for you to be running around, worrying about me."

"You're my friend," Pao told her simply. "I want you to be happy."

Jemma smiled warmly at her. "That's sweet, but do you know what would make me happy? Hearing about how your date went over tea tomorrow morning." Her nose scrunched. "You'll have to give me all the thrilling details."

That made Pao grin sheepishly, staring down at her feet as she swayed back and forth. "I might be up a little later tomorrow- if… I mean because it goes until midnight so… not  _too_ late. Just late for you."

"Then it'll be well worth the wait," Jemma chuckled. "Now  _go on_ before you're late to the ball."

She watched her scamper off, glancing once more over her shoulder before leaving the lab to skip down the hallway.

It wasn't until the sound of her footsteps had faded, that Jemma allowed her eyes to close and her shoulders to drop. Her fingers pushed lightly against the wool of her sweater, finding the small lump of metal hidden underneath, a locket that hung over her heart, and she held it as she attempted to ground herself.

She would call Skye, or she knew her friend would come find her, but not yet. For now she had studies to read, and experiments to run, something she truly did love, and maybe if she was lucky she'd be able to lose herself in her work for a few more hours.

If she could just tune everything else out for a few more hours, she could forget the thing she didn't want to think about or at least hide it away somewhere it didn't hurt so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That thing about the fruit flies and detecting cancer cells is real. From what I understood, they are working on ways to translate the signals received by the fruit flies directly into a message on a computer (rather than relying on behavioral cues like they do with other animals, which can be unreliable). That's what I remember anyway, I may be getting some of the details wrong. But I figured detecting brainwashed people wasn't such a step further :D
> 
> The Fringe reference in this chapter is the line "Science is patience." Walter tells this to Astrid when they are working with frogs and she responds "It's also slimy" 
> 
> Pao is the name of a character from the book The Telling. She dies before the beginning of the book (I don't think that's a spoiler?) , but she always seemed like such a great character and it was so sad the her and Sutty never got a happy ending, so I put a pair with the same names in this fic (though her character is very different).
> 
> Thanks to notapepper for all you help with this chapter :D


	3. I Don't Know How to Fix This

"Here! Stop here," Fitz said, tapping the side of the window before remembering that his hand covered in filth. "Er… sorry…That's unpleasant. I'll just… sorry," he mumbled, attempting to rub it off with the blanket that had been given to him by his helpful new friend, only to end up spreading the smudge.

The other man, Henry, made a face at the muddy slime that was now streaked across the window. "Yeah… I'm gonna be washing my car after this anyway so…" He shrugged. "Don't worry about it. And you can keep the blanket and the pants," he added, eyeing them with unhidden disgust.

Fitz grit his teeth apologetically. "I promise, I will pay you back just… uh… just… just as soon as I… umm…" He made to rub the bridge of his nose again but halted halfway there, remembering the awful, squishy feeling he'd felt earlier. "I'll repay any expenses…"

"It's fine man," Henry assured him, waving a hand dismissively. "It looked like you needed them more than I did. Are you sure you don't want me to drive you to a hospital?" He glanced outside the window of the car, frowning. "Or a building. Where are we?"

"I live here," Fitz told him, improvising quickly.

"You live outside?" he asked, unconvinced.

Nervously, Fitz's gaze darted from Henry to the barren, rocky landscape then back again. "Er… yes? I mean no, no I live in… my house. It's is just hidden… by the...uh.. the rocks. It's a trailer actually. I'm uh… I live here. Alone. In my trailer. I move around a lot actually… probably won't be here again tomorrow," he added, because he didn't want Henry to come back looking for the trailer and stumble upon the entrance to the Playground by accident.

Henry stared back at him for a moment, unreadable, and Fitz swallowed anxiously, hoping there wouldn't be any more questions.

Then he smiled, nodding his acceptance. "Cool. Take it easy though OK? It looks like you had some night."

Fitz shook his head, chuckling nervously. "You have no idea." ' _And neither do I,'_ he added silently. "Thanks for, uh..." He held out his hand, swiftly taking it back when he realized no one was going to want to shake it in its current state. "Thanks."

He left the car, hugging the blanket around him to ward off the cool night breeze, and watched as Henry rolled down the road.

When he was certain that he was gone, Fitz turned away, seeking out the hidden entrance of the Playground.

/-/-/

Jemma was awakened by a gentle hand on her shoulder and her eyes fluttered open, neck stiff.

"You should go sleep in an actual bed," Skye told her, taking the seat beside her to watch as she rubbed her eyes and twisted her wrist to check her watch.

It was nearly a quarter past one in the morning. The ball would be over by now and by the looks of her Skye had come directly from it.

She wore a simple, sleeveless pink dress and her hair hung loose over shoulders, curled at the ends. The overall effect was stunning, not that that was surprising, her friend was beautiful and she hoped she'd had good time, dancing the night away in such fanciful attire.

Jemma ran a hand over her hair, stifling a yawn. "I was supposed to call you," she remembered. "Oh Skye, I'm sorry I just-"

"Lost track of time?" she guessed, casting her a small smile which she sleepily returned. She shook her head, amused. "Don't worry about it, you're not hard to find." Her gaze swept around the brightly lit room, taking in the equipment and the high ceiling. "I know where you hang out. Are those tiny flies?" she wondered, finding the jar and tilting it to examine them.

" _Drosophila melanogaster,_ " she mumbled, still half asleep. "Fruit flies. They're going to help us detect agents who have been brainwashed."

"Jemma Simmons, saving the world with fruit flies," Skye laughed, setting the jar back down. "But not before she's had a good night's sleep. C'mon, we can walk to the bunks together, I'm ready to pass out and my feet are killing me. Stupid pretty shoes." She shuffled the mentioned shoes uncomfortably on her feet.

Jemma nodded agreeably and allowed Skye to lead her out of the lab. She'd grown used to her fussing over her, making sure she had enough sleep, that she didn't miss lunch, that she wasn't working too much (though she'd put up a good front resisting the later). For the most part, it was easier to go along with it rather than protest.

And she did make wonderful peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

"The ball was fun," Skye told her as they tiptoed down the darkened hall, careful not to wake any of the sleeping agents.

It was an innocent enough comment, but Jemma heard the not quite so innocent question it held, even as she chose to ignore it.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it." she answered, forcing up a smile.

"I think you would have enjoyed it too," she pressed, subtlety quickly waning.

Jemma's gaze drifted away, focusing on the wall beside her. "I had work to do," she said quietly.

"It could have waited." Skye objected. When Jemma didn't respond for several seconds she stopped, arms crossing. "Jemma you can't just bury yourself in work and ignore everything else, it's not healthy."

Coming to a halt a few feet ahead of her, Jemma closed her eyes, letting out a long sigh. The air thickened suddenly, poisoned with toxic gas. "Skye please… not tonight," she begged. "I'm tired."

"You need to talk about it sometime, even if it isn't with me," she insisted stubbornly. "You keep putting it off-"

"Because there isn't anything to talk  _about_ ," Jemma interrupted sharply, spinning around to face her. "Because I have nothing to say!"

Words couldn't bring back what she'd lost, they couldn't fix this.

Skye blew a slow breath out her nose, her eyes bright. "It's been a year and a half-" she began, quiet, gentle.

"A year, four months and twenty nine days," Jemma corrected impatiently, regretting her words immediately when she saw the pain flash across Skye's face. Her throat burned and her eyes stung but she'd cried herself out a long time ago, and she wasn't about show her weakness a second time. It was bad enough that Skye knew she counted the days, she didn't need to know that she  _felt_ them tick by, one by one, so that it was impossible  _not_ to count them. "I don't see why that means I need to stop doing my job. Isn't it a good thing that I'm still working? That I'm coping with the…" Her throat wobbled, shaking the words down until she stubbornly wrenched them back up. "... the loss?"

"But you  _aren't_ coping," Skye told her gently, taking a tentative step towards her, arms uncrossing and falling to her sides. "You don't socialize, you sleep in the lab as much as you sleep in your bunk and you don't sleep for long anywhere. You don't eat unless we put something in front of you and then you just sort of chew and swallow."

"Eating is chewing and swallowing," Jemma said flatly, fooling herself into believing the stillness would settle her. "And I'm perfectly capable of feeding myself."

"Yeah but it's like you're on autopilot," Skye argued. "You're like a robot unless you're experimenting on flies or reading about newly discovered Asgardian slime mould or… whatever it is that's falling out of the sky these days."

Jemma scoffed, shaking her head. "That's not… I'm not a robot."

"I know you're not," Skye said quickly, reaching out her hand to touch her shoulder, only to pull it back when Jemma leaned away, bringing her arms up to wrap around herself and create a defensive cocoon, a barrier between them. Skye's gaze dropped, weighed down by the pain that hung over them. "I just wish you'd let me help you."

She opened her mouth, wanting to protest, to tell Skye that she didn't need any help, but she couldn't. Cold water flooded her heart, leaving it heavy and numb, and she needed this conversation to end or it was going to crush her.

"I know you miss him," Skye went on sadly, oblivious to the pressure building inside of her. Jemma's eyes shut tight, trying to keep herself from bursting, sitting as still as she could so she wouldn't fall while the world spun out from under her. "Fitz wouldn't-"

Her head jerked up, eyes snapping open. "Don't," she barked, guilt jolting across her chest when she saw her friend flinch, but she kept going, words spraying out like water from a burst dam, uncontrollable, cracking like the spent concrete. "He's gone. He's gone and there's nothing I can do about it." Her heart swelled unbearably and she blinked back tears, taking in a shaky breath before continuing. "It doesn't matter if I  _talk to someone_ , it doesn't matter that we caught the man who did it, that he'll be in prison for the rest of his life, that I didn't kill him when…" She swallowed, trying to shove the tangle of nettles down her burning throat. "When I  _should have_."

"Jemma…" Skye murmured, lifting her hand in a second attempt to reach out, but Jemma took another step away.

Tears streaked down her cheeks and she shook her head roughly, denying any form of comfort. "I could have done it," she continued sharply. "I had him cornered. He was rambling on about how he'd  _saved him._ "

Her volume was rising, loud enough that people began peeking their heads out into the hallway, wondering what all the noise was about, but she didn't care about them.

"H-he wasn't making any sense. He said he put his soul somewhere safe, acted like he'd d-done him  _a_ favour and I was so  _angry_. I didn't know that I could hate someone that much." She laughed bitterly, scowling at the memory as Skye motioned for the other agents to go back to bed. "But I let him go, because I didn't want to be  _that._ I didn't want to be an executioner. Fi-Fitz wouldn't have..." Her voice broke and she shuddered. ' _Fitz wouldn't have wanted that for me.'_ She left the thought unspoken, shrugging miserably and her voice flattened. "He was lying though."

"The man was an assassin," Skye mumbled, her fingers digging into her palm as her hand formed a fist. "Someone paid him to do it."

"Four million American dollars," Jemma spat, allowing her rage to mount, because it was far less painful to be angry than to remember how helpless she was. "He murdered him for a bloody  _payoff._ "

Her eyes flared, and for a moment she was somewhere else. She was in a dark, abandoned basement, aiming a gun at the monster that haunted her nightmares. How could she have imagined that she would come to hate him more than she had in that moment?

"I should have pulled the trigger," she growled.

Skye shook her head sadly. "That wouldn't have fixed anything."

Jemma didn't reply to that, but the fire in her eyes was dying, and it left a smokey chill behind, wisping around inside of her to remind her of how empty she'd become.

It was a minute before she spoke again, and when she did her voice was hollow and frail. "I don't know how to fix this, Skye," she whispered.

That was it. It was over. She was done.

Without waiting for a response, she wove around the other agent and slipped into her bunk, shutting the door behind and locking it with a firm  _click._

/-/-/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fitz's new friend Henry is named for the Henry from Fringe (for some reason that name has become synonymous with friendly/helpful random strange to me XD) So that's kind of a Fringe reference (even if it's overused :P)
> 
> Thank you to notapepper for ensuring this chapter was in tip top shape :D


	4. Welcome Home

_Jemma_

Fitz's voice called to her from somewhere in building, high and frightened.

_Jemma, help me!_

Her heart hammered against her chest as she ran towards it through the twisting, forking, hallways. She ran despite the fact that her feet seemed to have been encased in lead, now heavy and cumbersome, frantically trying to find her way to him, but every path she took seemed to lead to a dead end and it was dark, so dark, she could barely see a foot in front of her.

"Fitz where are you?" she shouted.

_Hurry!_

She'd never heard him so scared before. His cries kept changing their origin, growing in desperation each time he called to her.

_Help me!_

Another wall, thick, smooth stone, blocking her path.

_Jemma!_

The floor stretched out before her, longer and longer and when she finally neared the end he had moved again.

_Please Jemma, don't let me die._

He was weeping now, terrified and alone.

"I won't!" she promised, struggling to run, though it felt as if her legs were moving through dense mud. "I'm coming Fitz, hold on."

A long, awful scream ripped through the air. It was close, right beside her, and when she turned her head she found him, lying crumpled on his side, completely still.

"No!" she shrieked.

Too late, her legs obeyed her and she raced towards his unmoving form, dropping down beside him and gently lifting him up to cradle against her.

"No," she moaned, voice breaking as her heart shattered inside her chest. "No. Wake up."

His eyes were closed, a pinkish liquid running down his face in streaks beneath them like tears dyed red.

"Wake up," she begged, shaking him so that his head lolled lifelessly against her. "Wake up, wake up, wake up." She chanted the words, over and over until they didn't sound like words anymore.

_Help me_

He hadn't moved, but she heard his voice, surrounding her from all sides, seeping through her ears into her head where it stuck and she heard his cries from the inside out.

_Please, don't let me die. Help, help me! Jemma help me. Please-_

Her eyes flew open, pulling her, gasping for breath, out of her nightmare, her cheeks drenched.

It was absurd, considering the content of the dream that had woken her, but for half a second she forgot that he was gone and she reached out for him, expecting a warm body or the soft, comforting sound of his breath as he slept.

The cold empty space she found instead twisted her heart and she whimpered, pushing her face into the side of her pillow to let it soak up the hot tears that rained out of her without any sign of easing their torrential flow.

It had been months since she'd last slipped up like that, since her mind had betrayed her, placing an imprint of him in front of her like a ghost only to let it disappear when reality caught up with it. She'd open a door and expect him to be standing behind it, look up from her work and expect to catch a glimpse of him working alongside her.

Like so many things though, she'd thought time had began to take it away. As the days passed, her brain was learning to omit him from her imagined picture of the world she lived in, the same way his scent had long ago left the room she slept in and the last of his things had been found and sorted.

She curled around herself, holding everything together as her shoulders quaked and she waited for the waves of pain running through her to die down, for her soul to stop screaming for him.

What she'd said out in the hall had been a lie, she wasn't OK, she was living on the caldera of a volcano, waiting for it to erupt and each time it did she was left scorched and battered on top of it again, waiting for the next one.

Someone knocked at the door, a gentle, hesitant tap that broke into her despair and made her stifle down her next sob, breathing deeply through her nose as she attempted to calm herself.

"Jemma?" It was Skye, quiet and sad even through the door. "Jemma are you OK?"

There was a short pause as she waited for an answer, but Jemma didn't trust herself to speak just yet.

"I'm sorry," Skye continued and it was clear that she meant it. "I shouldn't have pushed you like that. It was stupid, a dumb, not-good thing to do."

Jemma sniffed, pulling the blanket further over her shoulder. She wanted to answer, to say it was OK and of course she forgave her, but she couldn't until her throat stopped burning or it might come out as a whimper.

"You don't have to say anything," Skye assured her, as if hearing her silent thoughts. "Just… I'm here, OK? Whenever you need me… if you need me."

She stopped talking and Jemma found herself worrying she was going to leave her alone. It surprised her to realize that that wasn't what she wanted.

"Skye?" she called.

"I'm still here," her friend murmured.

She swallowed, gathering her courage.

' _You can't keep up like this,'_ she reminded herself. She couldn't live this way anymore, closed and shaken like a soda bottle ready to pop.

"I miss him," she admitted. ' _I miss him so much that's it's tearing me apart. I feel like when he died he took my heart and I'm dead too now. Except I'm not, I'm alive, even if it doesn't seem that way. '_

Skye's breath hitched and Jemma wondered if she was crying as well. Her next words gargled as if she still were. "I know."

' _She misses him too,'_ she thought. ' _Maybe it wouldn't be so lonely to miss him together. Fitz wouldn't want either of us to be alone.'_

Jemma sat up, pawing at her eyes and sniffing loudly. "I- I can't sleep," she told her.

"Me neither," Skye answered sadly. She paused. "Hey, do you want to go watch videos of baby animals?" Jemma heard her laugh weakly through the door, a valiant, however doomed, attempt to lift the mood. "I think I know where they put the leftovers from the party, there's probably enough ice cream in the freezer to make us never want to eat anything sweet ever again."

She chuckled along, sniffling some more before getting up and pulling on the worn out old sweater that was draped over her chair, the button up one, with patches on the elbows, the one that still felt like Fitz even if it didn't smell like him anymore.

"I think I'd like that," she said, picking up the locket on her bedside table and buckling the clasp behind her neck before tucking it safely under her shirt. She hadn't opened it in a very long time, but she knew the words inscribed inside it by heart anyhow. "Just… just no…"

"I know," Skye answered quickly. "Just puppies and kittens."

Jemma opened the door and, to her credit, Skye didn't bat an eye at her tear streaked face, despite the mess she must have been.

"Perhaps baby elephants?" she suggested, pulling up a smile even though it felt entirely unnatural. "Or the ducklings that think the labrador is their mother."

Skye's eyes were bright but she laughed at that. "Let's just go wild."

/-/-/

High above the surface of the Playground, Fitz stumbled around in the dark, searching for the hidden entrance embedded in the side of the rock face.

He didn't have an access card so he felt behind a thick spread of moss for the two way speaker and hit the button to contact the security guards.

"This is agent Fitz," he told them, leaning forward to ensure the microphone picked up his voice clearly. "I've been, uh…. compromised. Can you send someone to come get me? Agent Simmons maybe-"

"Sorry, who is this?" the guard asked, a man, older by the sounds of it. Fitz didn't recognize him.

"Agent Fitz," he repeated, louder this time, wondering if there were something wrong with the communications system. A cool breeze ruffled his hair, flowing through the thin fabric of the blanket which he'd wrapped around himself like a cloak, and he scrunched his arms to his body, attempting to keep warm. "Look it's really cold out here. Ask for Simmons, she'll know who-"

"There is no agent Fitz in our registry," he interrupted, suspicious now. "What division are you from?"

"I'm 616," Fitz answered impatiently. "Coulson's team, you know,  _the Director of SHIELD_. He knows who I am. If he's there-"

"There is no agent Fitz in SHIELD 616," The man told him edgily. "Sir, I'm going to need to ask you to wait where you are. We're sending someone to get you."

"Thank you!" he exclaimed, relieved before the first half of what had been said sank in. "Wait… no, yes there is."

Silence.

Fitz tapped the call button again, guessing the connection had been broken. "Hello?"

Nothing.

"You can't leave me out here to freeze my fingers off!" he protested, pivoting around to where he knew they kept one of the hidden cameras (one  _he'd_ helped install), knowing that if they weren't transmitting audio, the lip reading software would get his message across. "I don't even have any shoes! Call Jemma, or Skye or Coulson or  _anyone_. They'll know who I am."

And yet, still nothing.

"Unbelievable," he muttered under his breath, turning his attention back to the call button, pressing it several times only to determine that it had been disconnected. "This is unbelievable, and at the Playground of all places." He spun around so that he was facing the camera once more. "I bloody live here!" he shouted.

The hidden door slid open with a sudden thunk, cutting off the end of his complaint and his head snapped towards it, shoulders dropping in relief when he recognized Skye.

"Oh good _,_  Skye it's you." He blew out a long breath. "I was starting to uh… to…" He fell silent, noticing her expression.

Her eyes were round and bright, locked onto him like she couldn't believe what she was seeing, as if she were scared that if she broke contact he'd disappear.

She had come out with her gun raised towards him, but her formerly solid stance had loosened when he'd turned around and, hands trembling, she lowered it towards the ground.

"Oh my God," she breathed, words thick with an emotion he wasn't sure he could completely identify. "Fitz?"

How long had he been gone? It had felt like no time at all, and he'd been sure that he'd been kidnapped only a few hours before he'd been left in the field, but maybe…

Maybe he'd been gone for  _days_.

"I'm back," he assured her softly, taking a step forward and wondering why his friend had suddenly turned to stone. "I'm OK." He looked down at his mud coated body and chuckled uneasily. "Well.. mostly."

She gaped at him, chest rising and falling with ragged breaths, speechless for several seconds. Then her mouth moved and she began to choke something out, but before she could May appeared behind her, walking up from the tunnels below.

Without breaking stride or losing her flat expression, the other agent raised her weapon and shot him twice in the chest.

Just before he hit the ground, in his last moment of consciousness, Fitz was sure he felt it quake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to notappeper for you help editing this chapter :D
> 
> Also I'm not sure how people normally dream, but that's totally how my dreams work. You can't seem to run right and things turn into things they shouldn't and nothing make sense, especially nightmares.
> 
> I don't think there's a Fringe reference in this chapter, but I could have forgotten that I put one.
> 
> Yay! Fitz is back. But everything may not be the way he remembers it...


	5. The Cell in the Basement

When Fitz came to he was laying face up on a small, metal framed bed, staring at a grey concrete ceiling. A single panel in the centre illuminated the room in harsh white light and he scrunched his eyes shut, groaning and holding his aching chest.

He was still caked in mud, which had slowly began to dry so that now it itched and flaked off of him in clumps, and he still didn't have a shirt but someone had wrapped his blanket around him, keeping him warm while he slept.

Grumbling and disoriented, he pushed himself up, only to come face to face with Skye, watching him guardedly from a chair a few feet away. When their eyes met he tried to smile but hers only narrowed suspiciously.

It was then that he realized where he was, why the grey walls and ceiling were so familiar. He'd never seen the room from this angle before though, he'd never been inside it, behind the invisible wall to face the person sitting on the chair, the single staircase out visible behind them.

He gasped and his fingers clutched the sheet below him, bunching it up underneath him as he drew his knees to his chest, eyes darting around uneasily to confirm that, yes, he was in the holding cell in the basement.

"What is this?" Skye asked coldly after a minute, watching as his attention shifted towards her, confused. "What…" Her head shook and she blew out an impatient breath. "Who  _are_ you?"

He frowned, not understanding the question. "You know who I am-"

"Save it,' she snapped. "You might have fooled me for a second up there but…" She swallowed, her eyes shining before her face hardened. "Well it's not going to happen again. So you might as well cut the crap."

Her animosity unnerved him, as did the fact that he had no idea what she was talking about. Why was she acting as if he'd done something wrong?

"Why am I in here?" he asked, forcing himself to make eye contact, trying not to flinch when she glared at him.

"That's not how this works," she answered coolly. "I ask the questions, you answer them."

"But I don't-"

"Who are you?" she demanded

"Fitz," he replied. "...Leopold Fitz," he added when she seemed dissatisfied with that answer. Her eyes remained chips of ice. "Er… agent… Leopold Fitz?"

"What's your real name?" she growled.

"That is my real name!" he exclaimed, bouncing off the bed and throwing his hands up in frustration, quickly snagging the blanket back before it fell to the floor (it  _was_  unnecessarily cold in there). Still, Skye was unconvinced, rigid as a stone statue. "Oh C'mon Skye! This is ridiculous. Who else would I be?"

"Now there's a question."

Skye's head whipped around and Fitz's gaze snapped up towards the source of the voice, a hook catching on his chest, yanking his attention towards her.

"Simmons…" Skye warned.

"Jemma?" Fitz called out, overlapping her, and she turned on him, eyes blazing.

"Don't you talk to her!" she snapped. "You can mess with  _me,_ try to get under  _my_ skin, but if you hurt her-"

"It's alright, Skye," Jemma assured her calmly, stepping off the last step and gliding towards them. "He isn't going to fool me. This is another mission, that's all it is. I don't care what our enemy  _looks_ like." She reached the chair, setting a hand on the back of it and smiling down at the other agent encouragingly.

What was she talking about? Why was she dismissing him like this? Her words stung in a way that made the hook in his heart dig into the flesh, ripping at it just a little, even as he was drawn to her still.

He gulped down the lump in his throat. "I don't know what you think is going on but-"

"I need you to open the cell," she told Skye, completely ignoring him, and he couldn't help the hot flash of indignation that caused him to cross his arms as he let out a huff.

Skye shot her a warning look. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Are you armed?" Jemma asked, her expression remaining neutral though he was certain that her shoulders had tensed.

"Why the hell would she need to be  _armed?!_ " Fitz exclaimed. "You're not planning to  _shoot_ me, are you?"

Neither of them paid him any notice. They seemed to be locked in some sort of stare down, neither one so much as blinking, both refusing to look away.

"Jemma?" he called, starting to panic. "You aren't going to shoot me right?" It was as if he were invisible. He took another step forward, heart pounding."Tell Skye you don't want her to shoot me!"

Under usual circumstances he wouldn't have thought that that was something his friend  _needed_ to be told, but after his experience with May at the surface, and his recent treatment, he didn't think he could be too careful.

At last she turned to him, sighing deeply. "No, no one is going to shoot you," she muttered.

Fitz nodded, his shoulders sinking in relief. What had he been thinking? This was Jemma. Whatever she thought he did, she'd never let anyone hurt him.

"As long as you behave yourself," she added and his heart sank, an awful, decaying blob settling in his stomach and leaking its sour sludge up into his throat.

His legs gave out beneath him and he slid to the floor along the thin metal bedpost, wondering if this is what it would be like to swallow a beaker of acid. He thought the acid would probably hurt less than the love of his life threatening to have him shot if he so much as twitched the wrong way.

"And if you harm her in anyway-" Skye warned, apparently having decided to open the cell.

His chin rose at the accusation, spine prickling in defiance. "I would  _never_ hurt you," he said firmly, looking directly at Jemma as he spoke, trying to show her how much he meant it, hoping she could see the blaze of emotion burning beneath his skin. "I love you."

She winced, a shadow passing over her that made her lip tremble and her eyes moisten, fingers twisting at each other miserably. She looked like someone had struck her across the face.

"It's not real," Skye reminded her soothingly. "That's not Fitz."

Fitz groaned in frustration, butting the back of his head against the post. ' _Not this again. Why won't anyone tell me what's happening?'_

"Open the cell please," Jemma requested tightly.

Skye chewed her lip, eyeing her with concern, but she nodded and tapped the controls on the tablet which she held in her lap, pulling an ICER out from her belt the second the shielding went down, though she didn't point it towards him.

Even so, Fitz found himself freezing up, not daring to move as Jemma cautiously approached.

She knelt down in front of him, her gaze running across his face, taking in every detail as if thought she might be tested on it later.

Fitz stared back, praying for her to see him, really see him, and realize that this was all just a huge mistake.

After half a minute her hand rose, reaching out towards his cheek.

He smiled, light with relief. his eyes twinkling from the starlight that shone out of her. Of course she knew it was him, they were connected, inexplicably linked by an invisible thread that wound through their heads and wrapped around their hearts. All she'd needed to do was look into his eyes and-

" _Ouch!"_  he cried, recoiling in surprise when her hand diverted around his face, finding a lock at the back of his head and tearing out a few hairs. "Hey! What…. what was that for? That really hurt you know _."_

He was still rubbing his sore scalp when she leaned back, pulling a plastic bag out of her kit to deposit the hairs into.

"I'm going to need a blood sample," she said curtly, avoiding his gaze and pulling out a capped syringe. "H-hold out your arm." Her eyes narrowed at her stutter and she pressed her lips together determinedly, exhaling a deep breath through her nose.

Fitz hugged his arm to his body protectively, shaking his head. "Why?"

He'd never felt this way before, even at their lowest point he'd at least trusted her enough that he wouldn't have been so wary of her demanding his blood. Or at least he wouldn't have been so completely unwilling to give it. But the way she held the needle,  _refusing_ to look at him, to offer him even a scrap of comfort, was completely foreign, unsettling, and he couldn't bring himself to follow her instructions.

It wasn't that he thought she'd actually hurt him, she wouldn't, of course she wouldn't, not more than she had plucking out a few hairs. He just didn't want her poking and prodding him like he was a fly in a jar rather than a human being. He wasn't a fly and until she acknowledged that, she wasn't getting his blood.

She held out her hand, twitching her fingers for him hurry up. "Your arm."

He didn't move. "Jemma what's happening?"

"I need a blood sample," she repeated. Flat, cold.

The toxic lump in his stomach oozed again and he shook his head, shuffling away only to find that he was already pressed against the side of the bed. "No. Not until you tell me what's going on."

She sighed, leaning back on her heels, and for the first time he noticed how tired she looked. Dark circles hung below dull eyes and her skin was pallor and ashen.

Her free hand trembled and she dug her fingers into the fabric of her pants to stop it.

What if she was being forced to do this? What if they all were? May had shot him, yes, but with an ICER not a real gun and he was sure it was Skye who had left him wrapped up in his blanket, on a soft bed rather than the cold floor. He was their prisoner, but they were being gentle with him and, taking in their down turned faces, he could tell that neither of them wanted to be doing what they were doing.

"It's just blood, yeah?" he asked, forcing himself to relax and let go of his arm.

She bit her lip, nodding slowly. Her glistening eyes threatened tears but she blinked them back rapidly.

He nodded too, eyes on her as he slowly extended his arm, pulling up his sleeve to give her access to the skin. Her cool fingers gripped it below the elbow and, carefully, she prodded the joint with her thumb, searching for a vein.

As she worked, he watched her, trying to find a way to tell her that he understood and that it was going to be OK, but he was afraid they were being recorded so he didn't dare say anything.

At last, as she was drawing out the needle, he thought of something that wouldn't be detected by the cameras. As she pulled away he raised his hand to catch her elbow and gave it three, soft squeezes, pausing for half a second between each one.

He couldn't remember which one of them had started the gesture but it had been an unspoken form of communication between them for nearly the entire year they'd been together. What had been truly remarkable, more so than its spontaneous occurrence, had been the fact that neither of them had needed to explain it to the other.

Its meaning had been obvious since the beginning, three squeezes for three words. I. Love. You.

She didn't react at all the way he'd expected. There was no small twinkle in her eyes, no twitch of a smile. Instead she shot to her feet so quickly she dropped the blood sample to the floor, shattering the glass and splattering the blood over the cement ground.

And then she was shouting at him.

"How did you know that?!" she demanded. "How did you know to do that?!"

He froze, his mouth opening and closing several times, but the words turned to dust in his throat. Why was she so angry? At  _him._

Skye had bolted forward, grabbing her shoulder and telling her to calm down, but she ignored her, jerking away.

"Only we knew-" Her eyes widened, as if a horrible thought had suddenly occurred to her and she glared at him. "What did you do to him?!" she cried.

He flinched at her ferocity, feeling as if she'd smacked him across the face. Never in his life had she been so furious with him.

"I… I... I don't...," he stammered, heart beating in his throat. "T-to who?"

"Nothing," Skye answered for him, trying once more to grab Jemma's shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze when she didn't squirm away. "No one did anything to him before, you know that."

That seemed to snap her out of it, her body relaxing like a deflated balloon and she nodded miserably.

Her gaze fell on the shattered vial and she took in a sharp breath, her face draining of the small bit of colour it had been holding on to. "I can't do this," she whispered.

"It's OK," Skye assured her, squeezing her shoulder once more before letting it go.

Jemma's lip trembled and her tears gathered, beginning to overflow when she spun around.

"Excuse me," she squeaked.

At that, she fled, scurrying up the stairs while Fitz trailed her with his eyes, stunned into silence.

Before she reached the top, Skye hit a button on the tablet and a wall of grey appeared in front him, trapping him alone with his growing sense of dread and his freshly bruised heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for betaing this chapter :D
> 
> The idea that Fitz doesn't like cold is taken from the comic book (the first one they released, not the one where they wear those battle suits.) 
> 
> The 'I. Love. You' thing is something I heard on a radio show one time. I don't even remember what the show was about but I thought it was sweet.


	6. I Don't Understand

**2 Years Earlier**

Jemma glided across the lab, cheerfully transferring her freshly made solution to her workbench so that she could begin preparing the tiny vials for the enzyme assay.

With any luck, she'd be one step closer to understanding Bruce Banner's transformation, the source of his incredible strength and, perhaps, a way to give him better control over it.

Footsteps sounded behind her and she set down her tools as a familiar voice called out to her. She grinned, warm as if she'd sunk into a hot bath, when his arms wrapped around her from behind, his lips brushing her cheek as she twisted towards him.

"Is that from Dr. Banner," he asked curiously, peeking over her shoulder.

"It is, and I hope you're wearing a lab coat," she scolded halfheartedly, tutting disapprovingly when her arm dropped and she found the wooly fabric of his sweater instead.

Fitz chuckled fondly, kissing her once more before he relinquished his hold in order to go acquire one. "You aren't working with anything too… that's… You'd be wearing gloves if that were, uh... corrosive," he reasoned, pulling his arms through the sleeves while she continued her work.

"Actually, in this particular instance, I'm more worried about  _you_ contaminating my samples," she admitted, pausing in her pipetting to shoot him a glance, shaking her head at the thought. "Imagine if a hair from your shirt fell into one of them? I'd have to restart this entire set." Her gaze softened, falling on his smile as her mouth twitched up to match it. "And besides that you're far too precious for me to allow you to become the victim of an easily preventable accident.  _Safety first_ Fitz."

He was watching her with that look on his face, the one she still couldn't believe was meant only for her because it seemed more appropriate for shooting stars or double rainbows. "I think you've already contaminated me," he murmured, eyes narrowed and glossy before he had a second to think about what he'd said. "That… that sounded more… uh… in my head that sounded romantic…" he fumbled, the tips of his ears ripening to red in embarrassment. "I didn't mean  _contaminated…_ er…" He chewed his lip nervously.

"Oh Fitz," Jemma sighed, shaking her head, though soft, fuzzy affection puffed just under her words.

"You should know that I'm rubbish at this," he told her, shrugging his shoulders as if it couldn't be helped.

"That's nonsense," she objected, placing the last of the little vials into the sample tray and pushing it into the machine. She clicked it on before gliding over to stand beside him, taking his arm and standing on her tiptoes so she could peck a kiss on his cheek. "You're wonderful and…" She blushed, heat rising to her cheeks at what she was about to say. "And besides, I'm pretty sure that you've contaminated me too."

That made him grin, eyes like sunshine hitting blue sky, and he lifted a hand to cup her cheek, planting a slow, gentle kiss onto her lips that spread the heat from her cheeks to the tips of her ears.

"See," she chuckled, lightly butting her forehead against his when he broke away, her hand winding around his head so she could weave her fingers into his hair. "You're excellent at this."

"You aren't so bad yourself," he said softly and she scrunched her nose, giving him one more swift peck before slipping away.

"I'm glad you think so," she told him, beginning to prepare the next tray. "And after what you did for our half year anniversary… lighting the dining hall like that and preparing that lovely lasagna. And  _the locket_. I still don't know where you found the time to make it, it's gorgeous. Absolutely  _stunning._ "

He tugged at his ear lobe, smiling bashfully. "You… you like it?"

"Of course I do," she said, casting him a fond glance. "It reminds me of you."

His footsteps shuffled across the space between them and then he was by her side, watching her work over her shoulder. "Do you mind if I stay while you run the tests?" he asked softly, breath flowing against her ear. "I promise I'll keep the lab coat on."

' _I always want you to stay,'_ she thought, her heart swelling in her chest, filling up the space so that her breath caught. ' _I want you with me for the rest of our lives, and for whatever's after that too.'_

The words never made it to her lips though, Fitz might think he was rubbish at romance but she was worse than he was. At least he knew how to show her into his heart, when she could only hope he was able to see into hers.

So instead she smiled, pausing to rub his arm with her free hand and wishing that she could pass the message between their skin, send out neurotransmitters like an axon meeting a dendrite.

"I'd love it if you did."

/-/-/

**Present**

Jemma stomped around the lab, gathering what she would need in a frantic haste. The world was crashing down on her and it was like she had balloons in her chest, filling up all the space so that she couldn't breathe, squeezing out the air that was left in her lungs.

_It looked so real, it looked just like him. It had the same eyes, same smile, same sparkle when he caught sight of her._

But it wasn't him, it was copy, a fake, and all the wonderful things it reminded her of were gone from the world forever. Her darling, with his golden heart and unspeakable courage had left her for good and this…  _this thing_ …. was a cruel joke. It taunted her, tempting her to believe it, but she wasn't a fool and she wouldn't do that to Fitz. She wouldn't betray him by allowing it to toy with her.

Even if she couldn't help letting it tear at her tattered heart.

She wheezed in another breath, her head spinning as she set up the analysis, mixing together the solution that would break open the cells from the follicle at the end of the hair she'd obtained from it.

_This would prove what it was, that it wasn't real. In just a few hours she'd be able to see with her own two eyes that this couldn't be her Fitz._

_Because she'd seen already, with her own two eyes, that her Fitz was dead. She'd held his freezing cold hand in her own, her life turning inside out as she stared down at his pale, still face. She'd seen his eyes, red tears streaked beneath them, closed for the last time by her gentle fingers before she was told to say good bye and that, no, she could not do the autopsy herself._

_She still remembered the way they'd looked at her when she'd asked. They hadn't understood. She'd needed to know what happened to him because she'd thought that if she could figure out why he was gone, if she could punish whoever had taken him from her, she wouldn't hurt so much._

_She'd never been so wrong in her entire life._

Her trembling hand slipped and a glass beaker fell to the floor with a crash, shattering at her feet and splashing its contents onto her shoes and up the side of the side of the desk.

Startled, she let out yelp, leaping away from it and stumbling into one of the cabinets.

_But then how had it known to do that? How could it possibly know about their secret gesture? Three gentle squeezes she'd never thought she'd feel again because they'd only ever come from him._

The cabinet wobbled, but didn't fall, and she slid to the ground, leaning against it all the way down because her legs had lost their bones. Her chest was so tight it hurt to breathe.

_Why did it look like him? Why would it take his form and his voice? What did it want? Why was it doing this?_

_Why was it torturing her?_

"Jemma?"

She recognized Skye's voice but she was unable to respond to it. There was no air in the room, she was suffocating, sinking to the bottom of the ocean and she was certain that this time there wasn't going to be a way back up.

Careful footsteps treaded across the floor and her friend knelt in front of her so that their faces were level, searching her over with alarmed concern.

"Jemma what happened?" she asked softly. "Are you hurt?"

She shook her head wildly, loudly gasping in mouthfuls of empty air to no avail. "N-no."

Her hands flailed in front of her, flexing before clenching into fists because she didn't know what to do with them, until Skye gently caught them, her grip loose, allowing for Jemma to slip easily out of it if she wanted to, but she didn't.

Instead she clamped her fingers around her friend's wrists, trying to steady herself.

"I-it's not… it's not him," she squeaked, struggling to speak. "It's… I-it…"

"Shh," Skye urged, using her thumbs to rub steady circles onto her arms. "Jemma slow down. Breathe."

"I'm… t-trying," she wheezed.

"Slowly," Skye soothed. Her breaths became elongated, deep and exaggerated. "Just breath with me OK. Slow down."

Jemma locked eyes with her, starring desperately and doing her best to imitate her.

The slow, steady, pumping of her lungs finally allowed them to work and after a few minutes, she evened out and the world stopped spinning.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, shame findings its way to the surface through her pain. She pulled her arms back, wrapping them around herself. "I messed up."

"No," Skye objected gently. She reached out to give her arm a firm squeeze. "No. No one expected you to go down there. It's OK, it wasn't your fault, and it wasn't that bad. It was just a bit of broken glass." She glanced over her shoulder, attempting a smile. "I see you're on a roll with that today," she kidded.

Jemma starred beyond her, thoughts far away, too far gone for laughter.

"It knew something Skye," she whispered after a moment. "Something only we knew. How could it-?" The balloons began to reinflate and her chest heaved as she moved her horrified gaze back to Skye. "What if they did something to him? Before." Her eyes flooded, tears streaming out to roll down her cheeks and claws ripped at her heart, making her voice grow small and high as she admitted her newest source of torment. "W-what if they hurt him?"

"He died instantly," Skye protested firmly. "He had no injuries, no one did anything to him before."

"According to the autopsy," Jemma mumbled, unconvinced. A fresh wave of pain passed over her and she choked out a sob. "I couldn't… We don't even know how he died."

"It was poison," Skye reminded her, drawing out the words as if she thought Jemma would have trouble understanding them. "You isolated it from his blood sample, remember?"

Her head shook, eyes narrowing. "No, no I don't know what it was… it didn't make any sense."

"Jemma…." Skye sighed.

"No!" she snapped, regretting her harsh tone when she saw her friend wince. Her fists clenched around the fabric of her trousers and she struggled to keep her next words even. "No, it didn't make sense, not how he died, not even the poison itself. The compounds don't react, they shouldn't have reacted… t-the poison shouldn't have existed."

Skye frowned. "But... they did…" She'd grown careful, speaking as if her voice might break something should she put too much force behind it.

"Yes  _altogether,"_  Jemma hissed, struggling to explain. "Altogether they react, but other than that they don't, not with each other."

"So… but they do react?" she tilted her head, confused.

Jemma nodded, a bit clearer now that she had something else to focus on. "Yes but their interactions are not predictable, it would require the assumption that the components  _do_ interact with each other, which they don't,  _except_ when they're all together. It's an unpredictable event."

"So…?"

"So whoever made the poison had capabilities that we do not," Jemma pressed. She cast her gazed downward, trying not to lose it again, because her next thought wasn't at all a distraction. "If they were able to predict an unpredictable event what else could they do? Get into his head? Steal his thoughts? In-... inflict p-pain without leaving a biological trace?"

"No one hurt him," Skye insisted, but this time it sounded like Jemma wasn't the only one she was trying to convince.

They'd done  _something_ to him, recent evidence strongly suggested so, and she knew he wouldn't have given up such an intimate secret easily. If someone else knew about, it was because they had forced it out of him and the idea he might have suffered to create that thing was more than she could bare.

A sob raked through her, making her shudder and she had to wrench the words from her throat so that they came out gargled and gritty. "We don't know that Skye. All I know-" Her voice broke and she fought to continue. "A-all I know is that I don't understand. If I don't know how he died, how can I know it didn't h-hurt? He  _shut off_ Skye _._ Everything, every cell in his body just  _stopped._ I-it's impossible… i-it… it..." She whimpered, pulling her knees to her chest so that she could bury her face into them, shoulders quaking as she weeped. "I d-don't understand."

_They killed him and I don't know why, they hurt him and I couldn't stop it._

On she wept, until her throat was raw and her eyes swollen.

_He's gone and I'll never get to hold him again, I'll never get to feel him say 'I love you', for the rest of my life._

And still the tears would not stop.

_I wanted him back, but I didn't want this. This is wrong, so wrong, and it's going to destroy me. I'm not strong enough for this._

Skye didn't say anything, or try to stop her. She only rubbed her shoulder before going still, leaving her hand where it was and watching over her, a silent guardian, shielding her while she shuddered and shook.

/-/-/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> High five to notapepper for betaing his chapter :) (Autocorrect wanted to put beating :P)
> 
> The poison is a reference to Fringe. In the episode Making Angels there is a poison made of ingredients that only interact in the way Jemma described. It baffles both Astrids.
> 
> Thank you to Artesuna for the advice on Jemma's thoughts on the 'not' Fitz :)


	7. Well I'm Not Rumpelstiltskin

Fitz sat on the cold floor with his palms pressed against his eyelids, trying his best not to lose it.

He couldn't stop what had just happened from playing out in front of him, over and over, no matter how tightly he shut his eyes or tried to think of something,  _anything_ else. It stuck in his head like the score of a horror film.

_May, shooting him._

_Waking up a prisoner, Skye glaring at him from the other side of the barrier as if he were a criminal._

_Jemma telling Skye to hurt him, looking at him as if he were some sort of abomination._

_Jemma, demanding his blood and probing his arm as if he were a rat in a lab, worse, as if he were something less than that, less than alive._

_Jemma jumping away from him, shouting at him, running off in tears._

_Being left, all alone, without any idea what was happening or why they were doing this to him._

It was as if his world had been turned inside out, reversed so that the people he loved hated him and his home had become his prison.

It felt like he'd lost everything and that fear cut right down to his bones, ripping at his lungs until each breath was agony and he thought his heart was going to beat out of his chest. The pressure inside of him mounted, bubbling like a shaken soda pop bottle until he cried out, pushing over the desk and shattering the lamp onto the floor.

The loud  _clash_ startled him out of his head, and he gasped, stumbling backwards before falling back onto the bed and quickly skidding up against the metal backboard, pulling his legs up against his chest and holding them tightly, burying his face in his knees so that the cameras wouldn't be able to film his tears as he wept into them.

' _I want to go home,'_ he thought despairingly. ' _Please just let me come home.'_

/-/-/

A few hours later, a small squad of agents came to shower him off- but not before roughly scraping off samples of the hardened mucus-mud, skimming their tools across his flesh so that it was left raw and burning.

Then there was the shower. The shower was the worst part by far.

It wasn't even a shower so much as a freezing jet of water being launched at him from hose, pelting his skin, leaving it sore and achingly cold with no room for any relief that he was clean at last

The other agents, none of which he recognized, seemed unable to show even an ounce of sympathy, their eyes hard and glossy like polished stone, even as the water began to make his teeth chatter and he barely stifled a whimper.

Then he was shoved back into the cell and thrown a pile of clean, grey clothes. His sheets had been changed and the desk was now bolted to the floor. The broken lamp had been swept up and the blanket was no where to be found.

He was surprised to find that he missed it. It was a warm, muddy reminder that  _someone_ in this world had decided to treat him like a person, a reminder that he  _was,_ still, a person.

He narrowed his eyes, yanking his legs through the new set of trousers before spinning around to face his captors.

"Hey!" he shouted, prickling in annoyance when not one turned to acknowledge him. "Hey I want my blanket back!"

Technically, it wasn't even  _his_ blanket, and he felt like a child for even asking, but for all they knew it was his property and they had no right to take it. Not that they had any right to do any of the things they were doing to him now.

"Are you listening?" he demanded, stepping forward so that he was only inches away from the barrier that held him in. "It's  _my_ blanket. I'm sure you've checked it for… for… uh, for spyware… by now. So… so you… uh… you better give it back."

His heart sank when not a single agent had the decency to show that they'd heard his request and he was answered instead by the return of his old friend, the soundproof grey wall.

Groaning in frustration, he threw himself onto the newly made bed, having decided to lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, with nothing to do, as oppose to sitting on the hard floor (which had started to hurt his behind) with nothing to do.

It smelled like bleach and he hated it. He missed his stupid blanket.

/-/-/

A few hours later, just when his stomach was truly beginning to rumble, scrunching and gargling to lament it's utter emptiness, the wall became clear once more.

Fitz bolted upright the second he caught a glimpse of the outside world through the corner of his eye, finding himself face to face with Coulson.

He scowled at him, crossing his arms. "Well it's about bloody time," he complained. "How long are you going to keep me in here?  _Without anything to eat._ " His stomach grumbled once more and he hugged it with one arm. "This is inhumane." He paused for only a brief moment before adding hotly. "And I want my blanket back."

Coulson only stared, tilting his head back and forth as if he were looking at a particularly well put together model airplane, scanning him over until Fitz hugged his legs to his chest, uncomfortable.

"You're a very good copy," he finally said, and Fitz was surprised to hear his voice laced with sorrow. "We even managed to pull some skin cells from the mud we scraped off of you, Simmons says they look human but we're still waiting for the DNA analysis."

' _Of course they look human! What do you think I am a mouse?'_  he thought incredulously, but he had a far more pressing problem to address.

"How is she?" he asked softly, leaning forward slightly. "Is she alright? Why did she run off like that? What did I-"

"We aren't here to talk about agent Simmons," Coulson cut him off firmly. "I just wanted you to know that we have our best working on this. Whatever you are, we're going to find out, so you might as well start talking." His eyebrows rose and he smiled amicably. "Maybe you'll even get something to eat. Unfortunately your…" He made a face, clearly repulsed. "Uh, blanket, is still in the lab being processed."

Fitz's jaw clenched. He wasn't sure if it was because of the fact that he was so hungry he was ready to eat his own fist, the cold shower, or if it was just everything that had happened to him coming to a head, but he'd finally lost the last of his patience.

"I'm a human being!" he growled. "That's what your tests are going to show, so  _you_ might as well accept that."

Coulson blinked, though his cool expression didn't falter. "What's your name then?"

He blew out a breath through his teeth, fire burning up his spine. "My name, is Fitz."

Coulson shook his head. "No."

"Well it sure as hell isn't Rumplestiltskin!" he seethed, jumping to his feet. "I'm one of your agents for cripes sake. I've worked for you for  _years,_ been loyal to you for  _years,_  and this is how you treat me?"

His eyes flared and Coulson shook his head again, his expression darkening. "No, you are not one of my agents. My agent… my friend… is dead."

It was as if Fitz had been dropped into a tank of cold water. Everything had slowed down, space and time warped and blurred around the edges.

"What?" he croaked.

"Agent Fitz died over a year ago. Agent Simmons identified his body."

Fitz wrapped his arms around himself, feeling sick. "No."

"I was at his funeral," Coulson pushed on ruthlessly. "I threw roses onto his coffin." His expression hardened, angry now. "I grieved for my  _friend_. I watched  _my_ team, grieve for their friend. I watched Jemma…"

He stopped and Fitz lifted his burning, watery eyes towards him, swallowing hard. "She thinks I'm…" But he couldn't say it, it was insane, he wasn't dead, he was right there.

And yet Coulson had said they'd identified a body… that  _Jemma_ had...

His stomach ached as if someone had kicked him.

"Agent Simmons has had a rough year," Coulson told him. "But she's strong and she knew Fitz inside out. You aren't going to fool her- and if you  _try,"_  he rose to his feet, taking a few menacing steps towards the barrier, "if you hurt her more than she's already been hurt, I'm going to make sure you end up somewhere far less comfortable than this place, are we clear?"

Fitz stared numbly down at his feet, the world spinning dizzyingly around him. He recalled her now, strained and tired, the way she'd flinched when he'd told her he loved her, bolted away when he'd squeezed her elbow.

She thought he was a copy, someone- or something- doing this to hurt her. Something wicked that was using his form to manipulate the people he loved.

No wonder she'd been so angry. He'd have been furious if someone had tried to use her against him like that.

And devastated. Losing her the way Coulson was saying that she'd lost him would have killed him. She loved him as much as he loved her, he knew she did. He felt it in her fingers when she touched his face, in her hands when she lay them on his shoulders, her arms when she wrapped them around him. He knew that, to her, he was precious and he couldn't bear the idea that he'd left her, caused her so much pain.

"I should have run away," he whispered, a warm tear finding it's way onto his cheek. "I shouldn't have let him take me."

"Who?" Coulson demanded, and Fitz looked up to see him only inches away from the barrier, watching him carefully. "Who took you? Are you saying someone did this to you?"

Fitz sucked in a shaky breath, trying to reign in his tidal wave of emotions so that he could explain. "Th-there was man," he told him. "He sat down next to me at the… at the uh, the hotel and he had a," he fidgeted on the spot, struggling to find the word, holding up the imaginary object in his hands as he searched. "A… a canister of… of some sort… and he sprayed it in my eyes." He shrugged helplessly. "I don't know what happened after that, he must have…"

 _Must have what? Taken me away? Planted a body that looked exactly like mine? Kept me unconscious for over a year?_ He was quickly beginning to realize how little sense his presence made, why everyone was acting as if he were someone else.

Coulson was still watching him, expression unreadable, and it was all Fitz could do not to burst into tears. This was wrong, all of this, and he didn't see a way out, didn't see a way to stop torturing the people he loved.

"You… you can do whatever you want," he finally managed. "Take my blood, my skin, my hair, whatever you need. I'll co-operate," he vowed. "And I know you don't believe me, but I swear I'd never hurt any of you, especially Jemma. Not on purpose…"

His leader sighed, something close to sympathy running across his face before he backed away and sat back down on the chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"You're being filmed… we have software that can monitor facial changes and pupil dilation. Basically, it tells us if you're lying." he told Fitz. His head lifted. "But you knew that already."

Fitz nodded, because he did. He'd helped design some of the machinery.

"May is telling me that it isn't detecting anything," he went on, slowly, as if he couldn't quite grasp what was happening. "But we'll need to double check it, be sure you're really telling the truth and you're not just a really good liar. In the meantime though…" He gave him a half smile, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "I did promise you dinner."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for betaing this and making sure it was ready to go :D
> 
> The Fringe reference is the lie detector camera. They use it one episode to look for shapeshifters (it is designed by Massive dynamic of course :P) and it's suppose to be nearly fool proof


	8. Two of a Kind

Skye was waiting for her at the entrance of the Playground when Jemma returned, carrying the samples she'd gone to procure in a small, square cooler.

She took a tentative step forward, reaching out a hand but Jemma shook her head, veering away.

"I'd really rather not talk about it," she said dully and Skye nodded in agreement.

"Yeah… OK. That's OK." Her lip trembled and she took a breath. "What can I do?"

"Nothing," Jemma answered. She carefully shuffled the samples from one hand to the other, unable to keep herself from feeling protective of them. She couldn't stop herself from remembering that these fragmented bits of matter had once been part of someone she loved. "I- I'm alright I just need to test this. I need to see if it's…"

' _I need to see if it was actually Fitz that we dug out of the ground,'_ she thought, but the words wouldn't leave her throat. They were too heavy, weighed down with the pain of what she'd just had to do and her refusal to give in to hopeful fantasies. She couldn't allow herself hope only to lose it again, she knew that she wasn't strong enough for that.

"I just need to get this over with," she told her. Then she sighed, contemplating her next request carefully. "Well, actually… I might need the…" What in the world was she suppose to call it? What  _was_ it, if it wasn't him but it had his DNA? "The copy," she decided upon at last. "To run a few more tests on," she hurried on when Skye raised her eyebrows, concerned.

"Are you sure?" she cautioned, looking Jemma straight in the eyes as she spoke, as if she could tell that way whether or not she was telling the truth.

From all her years working alongside May, maybe she could.

"I'll be fine," Jemma promised. "He-  _it_ doesn't want to hurt us, it passed the lie detector test didn't it? And it's of average human strength and ability, even if it somehow managed to fool our machine. Besides there'll be armed agents just outside-"

"That's not what I meant Jemma," she said firmly.

She looked away, struggling not to show how bruised and broken she'd become, how shattered all this was leaving her. "I'll be fine," she mumbled. "I'm the most qualified person to do this, and if whoever set this up was banking on me not being able to…" She shook her head. "I can't let them win."

"This isn't about winning," Skye pressed, gentle now. "You don't have to prove anything."

"I'm not," she told her. "I  _want_ to do this. For myself and for Fitz." She paused before forcing a smile, straining to keep her voice light. "It's peaceful, where he's buried. He would have liked it."

Skye smiled too, her eyes swimming beneath her unshed tears, and she nodded sadly. "Yeah, I remember. It's beautiful."

"It is," she agreed softly. She took a breath, steadying herself before briefly touching Skye's shoulder. Then she continued past her towards the lab. "I'll be ready, whenever you bring it up," she called over her shoulder.

/-/-/

Fitz had been awakened by Skye late that morning, head fuzzy and his limbs feeling as if they'd been filled with stones, even though he'd slept through most of the night and the morning too.

It was hard for him to imagine it having been so long. It hadn't seemed like he'd slept even a couple hours.

He had a few minutes to eat the breakfast which had been laid out for him earlier (cold toast and a banana) before Skye had ushered him out and up the stairs, warning him with a deadly quiet ferocity that he was not to harm anyone, especially not Jemma.

Even though he understood why, it made his feet trudge just a little more, his weariness just a bit harder to shake off, that she thought he'd ever hurt anyone, let alone the person he loved most in the world. It pained him that his friend believed him capable of such things, that she could only glare at him now when what seemed to him like only a week ago she'd been smiling and waving good bye.

Skye left him with the pair of expressionless agents just outside the lab and he crept slowly into the doorway, watching Jemma work before she heard him and turned around, forcing him to look away.

"You… uh, you needed me?" he mumbled.

He didn't know how to interact with her right now, what he was suppose to do, to say, that wouldn't cruelly pull at her grief.

Her gaze fell on him for just a heartbeat before she cast it away, keeping it anywhere but on him and the strength that drained out of him threatened to make his knees buckle.

"I need to use the MRI machine," she said, but it didn't feel like she was talking to him, even though it was an answer to his question.

He chuckled nervously. "What, do think I might be some sort of robot?"

Her silence was an answer in itself and try as he might he was unable to stifle the small huff of indignation that escaped him.

He certainly wasn't a  _robot..._  Right?

"The machine is this way," she mumbled, starting towards it, out the door without looking back to make sure he was following.

"Yeah, I know," he muttered under his breath, trailing grouchily behind her.

' _She's hurting,'_  he scolded himself. ' _Of course she's going to be a bit distant, treat you differently. She doesn't know it's you.'_

Not yet. But he'd been told by Skye that the results were coming back from the body they'd dug out of the ground. When it wasn't a match to his file, she'd see that it had to be him, everyone would, and then they could fix this. He could tell her how sorry he was that he'd left her, that it was going to be OK, it was never going to happen again.

They filed into the room and Jemma drifted towards the machine.

"This is where the subjects lay down," she announced, tapping the edge of the bed that would slide into the giant white plastic doughnut.

He was pretty sure that meant she wanted  _him_ to lay on it, so he shuffled over to hoist himself onto the bed where he sat, looking around as she adjusted the settings on the side panel. The room was small, but it still felt large compared to his cell. He'd only been confined to the small space for a week and it was already starting to drive him mad.

At least they fed him. Good food too, most of the time. It tasted like Coulson's cooking, though he hadn't struck up the nerve to ask if it was when the Director had paid him a visit. Talking to any of his old friends was like being lost in a labyrinth, one where the walls kept shifting as he learned new information about what he was, what they were doing about him.

About how much had passed in what had seemed to him like a single night. He couldn't help feeling cheated out of the time he'd lost with them.

Coulson thought he was safe at least, though he was still insisting that he remain in the holding cell for most of the day, just in case. May only interacted with him when she needed to and Skye and Jemma outright avoided him.

He hadn't had contact with either of them until again that day.

"The subjects lie down on the table," Jemma said flatly, not looking away from what she was doing, annoyance finding it's way into her voice.

"Can you call me something other than 'the subject'?" he complained, moving to comply with her half-asked instructions. "It's unsettling, like I'm going to be infected with some sort of horrible disease and then dissected or something."

She didn't respond to that, but continued to scroll through the menu until she was able to start the machine. He could practically see the air around them turning to icy crystals. Then she paused, debating with herself.

"Moving will stop the machine from working," she stated finally, eyes glued to the panel. "The process will need to be reset." She seemed to struggle with something, her gaze jerking towards him, lips pressed together. "Don't waste my time," she ordered harshly.

At least she was talking to him, even if her hostility felt more like a step backwards than a victory.

"I don't intend to," he answered, rougher than he'd meant to because she'd left him seared and defensive.

Her footsteps stomped out and he was alone, laying as still as he could as he was pulled into the machine. closing his eyes and doing his best to relax even though he was terrified in a way that had nothing to do with the tiny space, or the large spinning magnets.

' _What if I am a robot?'_ he wondered with a jolt. ' _What if I'm pulled to pieces? I don't want to die, even if I am a machine.'_

"Jemma?" he squeaked, somehow remembering to sit still through his panic. "You'll turn it off right… if... if it's hurting me?"

He waited, holding his breath, until her voice sounded over the intercom, softened just a little.

"I'm not going to hurt you. I just need you to sit still."

' _I am sitting still,'_ he thought, but he was grateful for her assurances and he found that he believed her.

Jemma wouldn't subject anyone to something like that. Even if she did think they were an abomination.

/-/-/

Much to his relief, he wasn't a robot.

Jemma had allowed him to join her in the cramped monitoring room as she looked over the data she'd compiled, only barely tolerating his occupation of the space beside her.

"Everything's normal," she muttered to herself, flipping through the images saved onto the computer.

Fitz stood a few feet away, watching her with his hands on his hips. "So I'm… I'm human?" Never in his life had he thought that'd ever be a question he'd need to ask seriously. "Well then that proves it doesn't it? That I'm me. It's  _me_ Jemma," he urged soft and desperate, pleading with her to believe him. "It's Fitz. I'm sorry that I left you all alone. I never-"

"Could you please stop doing that," she interrupted tartly, evidently not ready to listen to reason.

That was fair, she'd been grieving, devastated if what the others were hinting at was true. She'd  _thought_ she'd seen him buried. Of course she was going to be a bit skeptical, frightened even. He needed to be patient, take it slow, like waiting for a fawn to step into a meadow. Sit still, watch, don't make any sudden movements.

"I'm sorry, you're right, I should let you process this," he agreed, as politely as he could.

"No, not that," she shook her head, shooting him a quick glance before returning her focus to the computer screen. "There's nothing to process, I mean your hands."

He looked between his hands, still resting on his hips, confused. "What's wrong with my hands?"

She sighed, lifting her head to stare at him exasperatedly. "Could you… move them? I'd rather you didn't stand that way."

His attempts at politeness fell through and he snorted indignantly. "This is they way I stand!"

"I'd really rather you didn't," she pressed.

Their eyes met and he saw a small tremor move through her bottom lip before she looked away, inhaling deeply.

' _It's bothering her that I look like myself,'_  he realized with a jolt. ' _I'm reminding her of me, but she doesn't think I AM me. She still thinks I'm a copy.'_

It was enough to make his head spin but he complied with her request, dropping his arms to his sides.

"Better?" he asked.

She regarded him briefly, eyes frosting over. "That's acceptable."

Fitz had to bite down a hot retort.

' _Patience,'_  he reminded himself. ' _She'll see, when the results come back from the body, she'll know you're telling the truth.'_

"That's OK," he said, nodding encouragingly. "That's fine, you… you just… you just  _let it out._ I understand-"

A shadow passed over her, eyes hardening to steel, and his tongue froze up.

"You understand do you?" She laughed bitterly, disbelief and disgust shifting her features. "Then why are you here?"

He was trying  _very_ hard to stop his heart from smushing like a rotten grape, searching for something,  _anything,_ to reply to her, when the printer beside her chugged abruptly to life.

Fitz nearly jumped out of his skin but Jemma merely turned her head towards it, calm as if she'd been expecting it.

"That'd be the results," she mumbled, talking to herself again. Ignoring him.

The results. As in the DNA results from the body. As in the  _proof_ that he was him and this was all just some big mistake. His chest swelled with hope.

"Now you'll see," he told her excitedly, sauntering behind her towards the printer and trying to ignore the icy scowl she shot at him. "You'll see that I'm telling the truth and then… then we can…" But he didn't know how to finish the thought, realizing with a start that he didn't actually know what was going to happen next.

When she truly knew that it was him, not an imposter posing as the person she'd lost, but the man she loved, seemingly back from the dead, what would she do?

Several classic romance inspired scenarios played out in his, admittedly, overactive imagination.

In one, he saw her leaping with joy and throwing her arms around his neck, paper still in hand but quickly dropped to flutter to the floor as she took hold of either side of his face and planted the most loving and passionate of kisses onto his relieved grin.

In another, she ran, tears streaming down past her cheeks, into his open arms and they held each other while they wept with joy and relief. Loud and messy and beautiful.

Then, in yet another, slightly less pleasant scenario, she strutted towards him to slap him across the face, demanding to know where in the world he'd been all this time. However her anger only burned for a few seconds, before it dissolved and their arms were around each other as he rushed to explain and she told him to shush so she could kiss him.

Possibilities swirling in his head like leaves, caught in the wind, Fitz watched with bated breath as the results finished printing, hopeful because whatever happened next, it had to be better than this.

Jemma's expression was steely, but he noticed her fingers twitch when she reached for the printed results, her hand floating over them in a moment's hesitation before she inhaled sharply and snatched them up, gliding swiftly away from him so he couldn't see.

Even though he knew what they were going to tell her, knew that he was him so whoever they'd dug out of the ground  _must_ be someone else, he found his heart fluttering and his throat grow dry from nerves.

It wasn't at all the scene expected.

Jemma stared at the page for a full minute and a half, scrutinizing its contents. Her lips pressed together in a straight, trembling line, her eyes narrowed and bright and she swallowed hard, as if she were pushing back tears.

Then her gaze fell to the floor. "It's him," she mumbled.

Fitz frowned, not understanding. "You... you mean me?" he squeaked. How could it be him? How could he be dead and alive at the same time?

He couldn't be. Even after everything they'd seen, all the wonders and horrors that they'd witnessed, it didn't make sense.

Something flared behind her downcast eyes and her head shook sharply,. "No. I mean  _him,"_  she growled. "I don't know  _what_ you are."

Her words stung like hot sparks and he flinched. "Jemma…" he whispered, his hand reaching out to her subconsciously but she skittered back, still refusing to look at him. "It's… there must be some sort of mistake-"

"It's not a mistake," she said, her voice quiet and hard with anger.

"Then someone must have planted it," he tried desperately, his feet feeling close to the edge of a very, very high drop, ready to slip off. "They… they took a sample from me and… uh… and cloned it or something, made… made excess tissue to spread over the uh…" His head spun and the words began to slip as he started to panic.

Surely the body would be in the later stages of decomposition by now? He hadn't ever paid very close attention to the science of rotting corpses (because he had planned on eating again sometime during his lifetime) but surely after two  _years_ it would have been unrecognizable. All their unknown enemy would need to do was spread a good layer of tissue over the… human remains (he didn't really want to think about whose remains they actually were), enough to trick the M.E. into scraping some off for analysis, and he could call Bob his uncle.

"How, uh… how gooey was it? I mean was it… whatever it is, it's, uh… it's been down there for while, wouldn't it be a bit messy?" he asked, speaking his thoughts out loud before he could check himself and realizing instantly that he'd made a mistake when her shoulders stiffened and she grew rigid, muscles tense like a coiled rattler.

" _Excuse me?_ " she hissed. He could hear her fury, bubbling just beneath the surface of the quiet question, and suddenly the temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.

She was looking at him at last, really looking, but he wished she wasn't. She'd never looked at him the way she was right then, he'd never seen her warm, golden brown eyes so filled with cold and hatred.

His mouth opened but nothing came out, it was as if something were crushing his throat, squeezing it until it cracked and splintered.

"Get out," she whispered fiercely, fingers gripping the page so tightly it crumpled around them.

He shook his head, his eyes burning. This was wrong, it was all wrong, she shouldn't be angry with him, she shouldn't  _hate_ him.

She shouldn't be shaking like she was about to fall apart.

It was her pain that drew him forward, visible in the air around her like the shimmer of heat around a flame. It was her pain, and the overwhelming need to extinguish it, that made him take a step towards her.

"Jemma I'm sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean-"

"GET OUT!" she shouted, throwing the paper down as she started towards him.

It fluttered to the floor, strangely peaceful beside her gathering outrage and he stumbled backwards, his hands raised defensively.

He didn't think she was going to hurt him, not his body anyway, but he couldn't stand the heat of the flames that blazed around her and he was worried that his presence would only strengthen them, burning them both.

Apparently, he hadn't gone far enough though because she continued forward, shrieking at him until she became incoherent.

"Get out of here!  _Get out!_  You're not him, you're a- a  _thing_! You're a b-bloody insult to his memory y-you… whatever the hell you are! J-just get out! Get out-get-out- _get-out!"_

The sharp words hit him like hard punches to the stomach, pummelling him until he couldn't stand it anymore and he turned tail and fled, out the door, hearing her slam it behind him with a loud  _thud._

It wasn't until the echo had stopped bouncing off the walls, and there was a thick slab of solid wood between them, that he heard the first of her sobbs.

If her shouting had been punches, these were knives stabbing into him. They weren't loud but they boomed out of her, nuclear explosions of anguish and despair and she gasped in air between them as if they were burning up all the oxygen.

She was hurting, so badly, suffocating from it, but the only thing he'd accomplish by going to her would be to make it worse. So instead he stood like a stone statue, listening miserably to her cries, until he found the strength to walk away.

He left her alone because if he didn't and he made her worse than she already was, he'd probably end up hating himself too.

/-/-/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to notapepper for adding the oey to the gooey of this story :D You rock
> 
> M.E. means medical examiner. I think. According to cop shows and google :P
> 
> Jemma calling Fitz 'the subject' is a reference to/ inspired by Walter's interactions with Peter in the 4th season of Fringe while he is forced to examine him in an attempt to send him 'home'. He is very grumpy about it. I don't remember which episode it is.
> 
> Sorry this one is so late!! I had some stuff I had to do and all my time was eaten up.


	9. I Think That Pretty Much Makes You a Person

Fitz was back in his cell, having been escorted there by the pair of guards waiting down the hall, and suddenly feeling like maybe it was where he  _should_ be.

At least they'd left the wall down, allowing him to stare dully out at the interrogation room from where he lay curled up on his bed.

He wished he could stop crying, stop letting the world see how torn apart he was but he was hurting and he was scared and for the first time since he'd arrived he was beginning to have serious doubts as to whether or not he was what he thought he was.

If he wasn't Fitz, then why did it feel so much like he was? Why did he have his memories? Why was this the only life he knew? Why was Jemma etched into every cell of his body, every particle of him, his heart and soul and everything that came with them? How could he love her more than anything in the world, if this was the first time they'd met?

If he really wasn't Fitz then what was he? What kind of future did he have? How could he ever live in a world with the people he loved, with Jemma, if he was only going to hurt them? Where was he going to go?

Hesitant footsteps told him that someone was making their way down the staircase and he sat up, hastily wiping his face.

It was a woman, younger than him, or so it seemed. She stopped in front of the barrier, staring at him awkwardly and holding out a syringe.

Fitz sighed. "Another sample then?" he guessed, already holding out his arm as the barrier was lifted and she padded slowly inside.

She smiled apologetically. "Sorry, we just want to be extra sure 'cause…. well you know." She hovered beside him, motioning to the empty spot on the bed. "It might be easier if I sit down," she told him.

He nodded stiffly. "Yeah, whatever you need."

"I'm not very good at this," she admitted, nervously uncapping the end of the needle and grimacing at the pointed tip. "I've done it a few times but it isn't even in my field. I just volunteered because…" She bit her lip. "I'm the only one who isn't… invested, you know?"

"It's probably best that I stay away from them," Fitz agreed miserably.

She seemed unsure how to respond to that. "Well, umm, anyway… I'm Pao." She chucked nervously. "So, ha, if you have any complaints about your latest blood draw… you can… umm...complain about… me?"

Fitz was struck by the strangeness of her behaviour, not because she was flustered but because she was making an attempt to make  _him_ more comfortable. It saddened him that he had come to expect the opposite lately.

"Why are you being nice to me?" he wondered, watching as she probed for a vein.

She glanced up at him, surprised, before shrugging her shoulders. "I dunno, you seem pretty upset."

"Why does that matter?" he asked wretchedly.

Her mouth twitched but, once again, she seemed at a loss as for what to say.

He sucked in a sharp breath as the needle pierced his skin. She hadn't been joking about not being good at this but at least she seemed to have found a vein and he watched as his blood streamed into the vial, looking the same way it always had. If he hadn't been so miserable, he might have wondered who'd taught her.

There was a short pause in the conversation after that and Fitz found he missed her talking,  _having_   _someone to talk to_ , and he fumbled to explain his earlier statement.

"I'm just a…a..." He heard Jemma's voice in his head, shouting, crying, and fresh waves of pain rolled over him. "I'm just a thing," he croaked.

That made her frown, confused. "What, like a table?"

' _How is she not getting this?'_

"Like a… like a  _thing_ ," he clarified. She finished with his arm and he pulled his sleeve back down, his stomach a tumultuous sea beneath his burning throat. "Not… not a person _."_

"Do you feel like you're not a person?" she asked, curious.

He shook his head, sniffing at the strange question. "Well… no."

"I think that pretty much makes you a person then right?" She shot him a small smile as she put away the sample. "I think, therefore I am? That's Descartes right?"

' _Why would SHIELD_   _need a philosopher?'_ he wondered. ' _Is she a psychologist? Is this some sort of test?"_

She didn't look like a psychologist, she was too young, too… nervous. But then again what did he know? He wasn't a psychologist spotting expert (if those even existed) and SHIELD could be crafty. Perhaps that was all just a ruse to lull him into a false sense of security.

And then what? What did he have to hide from her? Or any of them for that matter? He was sad, that wasn't a secret (thanks to his hard working friend the not-so-hidden camera).

"What exactly is your area of expertise?" he asked, doing his best to hide his sudden suspicion.

"Electrical Engineering," she told him, bouncing back over to take the spot beside him. She didn't need to do that, she could have left. "You too right? You're an engineer?"

Not a psychologist then. His replacement maybe? He didn't really want to think about that and he decided that it didn't really matter  _what_ she was. Friendliness had become a rarity in his life and he wasn't up to being picky about who it came from. Besides he had nothing to hide.

"I used to be," he answered dully. "Or… I remember being one."

"But, I mean, you know how to do things still?" she pressed. "I hear you were good. Like,  _really_ good."

He sighed, shrugging his shoulders because he did _._ He remembered how to be an engineer… not that it did him any good now. "Yeah," he mumbled.

She grinned at him, looking suddenly much younger than he knew she was, like a child with a secret that she leaned forward to whisper excitedly between them.

"Have you ever heard of robo-battles?"

/-/-/

Every morning for the next few days Jemma watched him through the monitors, eating, doodling, toying with the robot Pao had given to him, unnerved by the familiarity of his posture and his movements… and the way they kept bringing her back.

That morning she'd arrived in the monitoring room to find him sleeping curled underneath the blanket they'd found him with. She didn't understand why he was clinging to it, keeping it close as if it were some sort of security blanket, why it was so important.

There was a lot she didn't understand about him.

She didn't understand how he could be so real, how his DNA, his teeth, even his fingerprints were a match to the man she'd buried. He couldn't possibly be human and yet there was nothing abnormal in  _any_ of his results. It was impossible.

And then there was the slime.

Most of it was mud. It had been composed mainly of rich soil and manure, scattered through with bits of plant matter. Mud from a farmer's field. There had also been high levels of hormones, prostoglandins and protein steroids, as well as nutrients, enzymes and even stem cells. She was assuming that those had come from whatever liquid he'd been covered in prior to his drop off in the field, the liquid he'd told them had been lodged in his throat when he'd woken up, but she didn't understand why it had been all over him. If someone had been attempting to dose him with the hormones, wouldn't it have been easier to do so intravenously? Surely they hadn't expected him to absorb the concoction through his skin?

Those were the questions her head asked, the ones the more rational side of her was urging her to pursue, but as she watched him, breathing softly with his guard completely down, she found that her heart was making her mind wander.

"It sleeps the same way," she murmured, causing Skye to turn another worried glance towards her, chewing on her lip as if she thought a storm was about to break.

Her friend had been there each day when she'd entered, waiting for her in the monitoring room as if she'd known that she was going to end up there.

"What do you mean?" Skye asked carefully.

"He needs his feet covered," she explained, her eyes never leaving him, caught on him as if they'd been snared in a trap, one she feared might be the end of her. "But he leaves his arms out and his hands…" His fingers flexed, a short, twitchy motion, and she tapped the screen. "Like that, they move. Sometimes his whole body does that… it used to wake me up until we redesigned the mattress…"

Skye sighed heavily, clearly getting the wrong impression. "Jemma…" she warned.

"I know," she said impatiently, waving a hand in dismissal. "I know, it's a trick. It's an illusion meant to… I have no idea, but I know it's only a copy." She paused, trying to ignore the way her heartbeat sped up when his fingers twitched again. "A very good one. I just need to figure out how it works… And  _why._ "

She caught sight of Skye out of the corner of her eye, looking at her with that all too familiar blend of pity and concern, and she set her jaw stubbornly, trying to ignore it.

"Are you sure you want to be the one to do it?" she questioned.

Gentle, always gentle. People walked on eggshells around her, even Skye, and she hated it. She wasn't fragile, she wasn't going to break if the wind blew the wrong way. She wasn't a china cup she was a thunderstorm, and their trepidation only fed the wind, sparked the lightning.

"I'm not letting someone else mess it up again," she shot back sourly, remembering the incomprehensible results from the autopsy with a scowl.

Skye didn't respond to the accusation, or relent in her careful sympathy. "I'm just worried that you're a little too close to this," she told her.

Close didn't begin to cover it, but she grunted in agreement, arms crossing. "Yes Skye, I am." She whipped her head to face her, blood roaring in her ears. "Those monsters took him away from me. They took  _everything_ away from him and then they had the nerve to send this…" She gestured furiously at the screen. "This  _thing,_ in his place." She shook her head, thick, sludge-like hatred bubbling in her stomach.. "No. They aren't getting away with this. I'm not  _letting_ them get away with this. I'm going to find out what this thing is, and who made it."

Her friend had gone quiet. Listening solemnly.

"And then what are you going to do?" she asked softly. "How is this going to end Jemma? This is a bad road, you know that. Don't you remember what happened last time?"

"I remember a mistake," she seethed. "I remember sparing a man I should have killed."

Skye tilted her head towards the video, her face carved from stone. "And are you going to kill  _him_?"

Jemma's eyes were pulled back to him and she was plagued by an irrational sense of protectiveness.

A voice tickled the back of her mind, nagging her however much she tried to ignore it. ' _What if you're wrong?'_ it whispered. ' _What if it is him? What if he's been back all along and all you've done is hurt him?'_

"No," she answered immediately. "No, he-... it's as confused as we are. It didn't do this."

' _It,'_  she told herself sternly. ' _It isn't him, it isn't your enemy but it isn't your friend either. It isn't anything. Don't you dare feel anything for it.'_

"Are you sure about that?" Skye asked, watching him too now, eyes bright with pain.

' _No,'_ Jemma thought. How could she be? She'd been living in a funhouse since the moment he'd arrived, mirrors creating mazes, stairs sliding in opposite directions, making her stumble, fall down. ' _I don't know what's happening. How am I supposed to make sense of any of this?'_

She remembered the footage from the night they'd received the results. She remembered him awake, curled up into himself to keep in the shudders that shook him as he wept, how alone he'd looked. How  _relieved_ he'd been that Pao had given him something to do, been kind to him. Perhaps she should have been kinder too. She understood loneliness and pain too well to turn a blind eye to his.

And she remembered before that, when he had reached out to her in the MRI room, trying to quell her pain. He was just as trapped in all this as she was, or at least it seemed that way. If it was a lie, it was a very good one, but the world was filled with very good liars, especially among spies.

If this was a lie and she allowed herself to believe it, even for a moment, she wasn't sure how she'd ever build herself back up again.

"No, I don't know that for sure." she admitted. Poison crept into her voice and her expression hardened in determination. " And if it did hurt him, if it's tricking us, then yes, I will kill it. If not… well at least we can send it back to wherever it came from."

Her doubt returned, a trapped moth fluttering frantically in her chest, but she grit her teeth and stilled it at once.

Whatever it was, it wasn't him, that was impossible. The same person could not exist twice. This was a copy and the sooner it accepted that, the better. There was a place in the Playground, in the world, in her  _heart_ , which had belonged to Fitz and, in a way, it was still his. The imitation sleeping soundly in the prison cell couldn't have it, not ever.

/-/-/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to notapepper for your help with this making this chapter fanfic ready :D
> 
> If you've figured out what that slime was... high five, but it might make it more confusing haha. 
> 
> Also, from experience, twitchy people do wake you up at night. I twitch too though, so I can't really complain.


	10. The Deal

When the wall turned transparent again, Fitz was expecting it to be Pao or Coulson or even May, not the worn down angel who stood before him instead, calling to him like a siren though she neither spoke nor moved for several long seconds.

They stared at each other, her sizing him up and him simply unable to look away, frozen in position at the desk he'd been sitting at, body twisted around to see behind him.

"I'd like to help you," she said at last, low, formal. "If you're willing to cooperate."

"Everyone here has my full cooperation," he told her automatically. It slid easily off his tongue after days of practice, but it didn't mean that it wasn't the truth.

She paused, seeming to mull something over. Then she took a breath, eyes shining determinedly. "I'm giving you a choice. This isn't an order."

He frowned, confused. "A choice to do what?"

"To find out what you are," she answered evenly. "I'm assuming that you don't know- provided you've been telling us the truth-"

"I have been," he said quickly.

She nodded. "Good."

He fidgeted uncomfortably, hesitating with is next question. "And… and then what will happen to me?"

"I think that depends on the answers we find don't you?" she answered. She kept her voice level but she was straining, he could tell. He could see the pain just behind her eyes and it became his pain too, twisting and mixing with the dead weight of guilt in his gut. "It'll be your choice."

"I can't stay here though." It was a statement, not a guess.

She shook her head, almost apologetically. "No, you can't stay here. You may think this is your home but it's not. Th-..." Her gaze fell to the floor, her words fading to whispers. "There's nothing for you here."

He swallowed the hot ball that crawled up his throat and nodded obligingly. "Yeah. I know."

_Don't cry, don't let her see that._

Why did his limbs suddenly feel as if they'd been filled with hot mortar, his stomach bubbling with tar? And why was he always  _so damn tired?_

He straightened and lifted his head, forcing himself to look at her. "I'm sorry," he murmured before clearing his throat, speaking louder so she'd know he meant it. "I'm sorry for all this. I'd never…"

His courage wavered and he stopped, taking a moment to choose his next words, because he needed to be careful with his phrasing, he needed to protect her.

She watched him, looking more defeated than he'd ever seen her, with the endless, run down patience of someone who'd given up making their time worthwhile. It shattered him, to see her like that, to know that it was his very existence that was causing it, but it also lent him the resolve to say what he thought he needed to.

"He'd be sorry too…," he told her softly. "The… the man I'm not. He'd be sorry that he left you and he'd… he'd want you to be happy." Jemma sucked in a sharp breath and look away but she didn't protest so he tiptoed ahead. "And he would have  _hated_ me, for what I did to you… for what I said. So… so I know I can't take that back but…" He was frightened, of what he was trying to say, but he had to try so he forced himself to be brave. "But I think that I can at least tell you what… what he felt. Or what I remember… even though I wasn't there."

_Stop rambling, get to the point._

"He loved you, more than he loved anything else. You were his future, and I think… I think he was yours." He watched as she gave the tiniest of nods, her eyes bright and her lips pressed tightly together. "He didn't want to leave but he did… he's…. he's gone. But you're still here, in the world with everyone else and the world still needs you in it. It's still beautiful Jemma."

He bit his tongue, cursing himself.  _You can't call her that, you don't even know her._

"It's still beautiful agent Simmons," he repeated, unable to keep his love for her from warming his words, though he resisted adding that it was more beautiful for having her in it. She didn't need to know how madly in love with her he was, it would only complicate things. "And he'd want you to be a part of it. You  _deserve_ to be a part of it."

He stopped there, waiting with his insides in knots for her to respond.

It was as if she'd been filled with cement. She stood, stone still except for her heaving chest, a storm in a glass jar, and he was afraid she was going to yell at him again, that he'd overstepped his bounds.

Then she exhaled slowly, tears welling onto her eyelashes but otherwise contained. "Thank you," she murmured. She frowned, seeming to catch herself, but her expression quickly softened and when she spoke again she had none of the venom he'd come expect from her. "I'll see you in the morning. Bright and early so…," She cast him the tiniest of smiles, so small it might have been his imagination. "Try and get some rest."

"I will," he promised.

He watched, wondering if he'd made a mistake or if he'd somehow managed to make her feel even the slightest bit better, as she slowly pivoted around and made her way up the staircase.

She left the cell wall clear and he stared at the top step for nearly an hour, willing her to return and hating himself for it, until at last he found the strength to tear his eyes away from it and go to bed.

/-/-/

That night, Fitz lay awake, curled up in a tight ball under his blanket as he shivered against the suddenly icy air. His stomach was doing loops inside of him, sending horrible waves of nausea across his body that he had to work harder and harder to stifle.

Something was very wrong.

Everything hurt, from his head to his toes he ached with the exhausting pain of a fever. He felt like the element on a stove, stiff, coiled and radiating heat, his stomach the bubbling pot.

His throat burned, screaming for water, but all he wanted was Jemma. He wanted her cool touch on his cheek and her soft words in his ears. He wanted her telling him that he was going to be OK, that it was just a fever and it would pass, that she'd pull him through.

He'd felt sick like this once before, his body left weak and sore from an electrical burn into which an infection had crept in, taking a hold of him before he even knew what was happening.

She'd been there though, back then, laying beside him and whispering stories and jokes as the antibiotics took effect. She'd painted loving lines down the side of his face with her fingertips until he'd fallen asleep and he'd awoken to find her sleeping in the chair next to him, his fever gone along with the infection.

But that hadn't actually happened. Not to him. The memory wasn't real and neither was he. Jemma wasn't coming to make this better, no one was.

He was completely alone.

His stomach lurched, the battle lost, and he scuffled forward so that he could leave his mess in the trash can, rather than all over his sleeping space.

He didn't think he'd have the energy to get out of bed if he did.

/-/-/

That morning, Jemma waited for him in the lab, doing her best to convince herself that she  _wasn't_ looking forward to seeing him again.

She'd been up all night, lost in her own confusion and ridiculously outmatched by the doubt that had begun to whisper in her head, now shouting and screaming and twisting her insides into knots.

They had an archive, of the prison cell recordings, and she'd forced herself to rewatch hours of it, feeling like she was seeing the events for the first time. It struck her how flawlessly and consistently the man who was their prisoner was also the man they'd lost. It made her heart jump and an electric buzz crackle through her veins, but it didn't sear into her the way his ever-present sorrow did.

He cried every day. Sometimes he'd try to hide it, other times he didn't seem to have the will to cover his face and she saw the tears roll down his reddened cheeks. The further forward in time she went, the more defeated he seemed, until it was a wonder he ever left his bed. He was crumbling, and from everything else she saw happen, she understood why.

She saw him in the beginning, when they sprayed him with cold water until he cried out, and her hand had been pulled towards the screen, her arms aching for her to embrace him and take him away from there even though it was far too late for that. She'd _let them_ do that to him. And she'd shouted at him, spewed hatred like acid, before then, after that too, allowing her rage to blind her to how much damage she was doing. She'd allowed him to be driven into the ground like a wooden stake, hammered over and over, taking the hammer into her own hands at times, and she wasn't sure how he could ever forgive her for that. How could he, when she was certain that she'd never forgive herself?

He came with Pao this time, she heard him chatting amicably with her from down the hallway, though he sounded tired.

They entered together, he a pale, weary shadow beside the lively, chipper girl who seemed to be slowing herself down so that she could keep up.

"I bet it was the chicken salad," Pao was saying, her head bobbing up and down in a nod as she raised her eyebrows seriously. "They let it sit out too long before they gave it to you, no wonder you threw it up."

"You were sick?" Jemma asked, an unwanted tendril of concern twisting its way into her heart. She narrowed her eyes, trying to appear businesslike, as if he were a subject. Because he was. He was her subject. Her patient at best. "When?"

He couldn't seem to look at her, his gaze downcast, chin tucked towards his chest while he mumbled his reply. "It's nothing to worry about. Shouldn't affect what we need to do."

"What  _are_ we doing?" Pao wondered, skipping over to a rolling chair and plopping herself down onto it.

He followed, finding another chair and easing himself into it, wincing and massaging the bridge of his nose when he sat down. The way he held himself, taking deep, slow breaths as he leaned on the side of the desk for support, suggested that he was plagued by more than just nausea and she was rattled by the transformation.

The night before he'd been upset, eyes pink and swollen and his mouth having forgotten how to smile, but today he looked downright  _ill._

Without thinking she glided forward, stopping only about a foot away and reached her hand out instinctively to feel his forehead. She saw his jaw clench but he either lacked the energy or the will to pull away.

"You're running a fever," she told him needlessly.

He knew, anyone would notice a fever that high. He must have been light headed, aching all over. The poor thing.

' _I'm allowed to feel sorry for him,'_ she defended prickly as the voice at the back of her head called out a sharp warning. ' _I can feel sorry for a stranger. He's been kind to me, as kind as he knows how to be. I'm allowed to repay that. It doesn't mean I think he's someone he's not.'_

This ran deeper than simple empathy though and no amount of lying to herself was going to change that. She hadn't been talking with a stranger last night, she'd been talking with the man she'd known and loved for half her life. When he'd tried to console her, when she'd seen how brave he was being, how kind, she'd seen  _Fitz._ As impossible and irrational as it was, she'd seen her lost love, back from the dead.

And now he was all she  _could_ see, whatever she tried to tell herself. He'd wormed his way into her heart, despite her earlier resolutions and she was torn between being furious with herself and wondering if, just maybe, her heart knew something her head didn't. Hope was cruel thing when it fluttered away but in her hands, gently flexing its wings, it was spectacular.

"It's not that bad," he said, the words coming out small and low. He coughed, his next breath wheezing out his throat, and her chest tightened in concern.

"No, it feels really high," she protested, touching it again with the back of her hand before stepping back, pressing her lips together as she looked him over. "If you're sick it may affect the results."  _And you need to rest to get better._ She swallowed the last thought back down, unwilling to allow herself to admit how much his laboured breathing and dulled eyes were bothering her.

"You just need a blood sample though, don't you?" he asked quietly. "And another swab from my cheek?"

Her eyes narrowed and she tilted her head, unable to comprehend why he wasn't taking her advice to rest when his exhaustion was so apparent.

"I think it's best that we get this over with as quickly as possible," he added, gaze darting up towards her before it flickered away, as if she were a light too bright to look at, burning magnesium, and she suddenly understood.

He wanted answers, the same way she did. He was suffering, trapped in a life that wasn't his, with feelings that weren't his own and he wanted to know why.

She bent in front of him, trying in vain to get him to look at her, her eyes gentle and, once again, feeling oddly protective. "We're going to figure this out," she promised firmly. "And then you can… you can…." She frowned, unable to think of a conclusion. Surely when they understood what he was, he'd know what to do?

"Then I can leave you all be," he finished dejectedly for her. "You'll have your answers and I can go."

She stared at him, struggling between her need to reassure him and her desire to keep things professional. He  _wasn't_ Fitz.

But he was like Fitz. And he was in pain, lost and frightened. If he really had his memories did that mean he had the same heart? Wasn't he brave and kind, like the man she'd loved so much? Did he love monkeys and science as well? Did he eat pretzels in one bite and cry when dogs died in films?

She remembered again, down in the cell when he tried to comfort her. She remembered how cooperative he'd been, how careful he'd been with  _her,_ and felt a lightning bolt of shame at the way she'd been treating him. She'd been so cruel to him.

Whoever he was, he didn't deserve this, and she was about to tell him as much when a loud boom shook the walls, startling the three of them into a chorus of yelps just before an alarm sounded above them.

And then the lights went out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to notapepper for all your great input for this story :D And for suggesting that Jemma go through the video footage. 
> 
> Dadadum! What is happening? Did Fitz really eat bad chicken salad?


	11. A Drifter with Imaginary Roots

Fitz heard Jemma let a shriek of surprise before her cries were drowned out by another explosion.

The walls shook again, glass beakers jangling together as dust showered down from the ceiling.

"Jemma?" It was Pao, calling out in alarm, her stumbling footsteps sounding from his left as she fumbled in the dark, searching for her friend.

"Here, I'm here," Jemma now, reassuring and calm. "It's alright, this is  _our_ base. Whatever's happening we just need to keep our heads and stick together." There was a pause and he heard her inhale a slow breath before adding firmly. " _All_  of us. That means you too, where are you? Can you find my hand?"

To his astonishment, she was reaching out to him, unseen in the pitch darkness, though he felt her fingers slide through his and her hand clamp around his own when he held out his arm towards her voice.

"Th-that's you right?" she asked, unable to mask the tremor that passed through her, illuminating her fear like a match.

"Yeah," he answered gently, giving her a quick squeeze. "Yeah this is me."

"A-and I have your other hand," Pao said shakily. "R...right?"

"You do," she assured her.

Pao let out an audible sigh of relief. "Shit. What was that?"

"Language," Jemma scolded. The short response sounded automatic rather than a true reprimand however.

"It sound almost like a pipe bomb," Fitz supplied. "But… but more…" He mimed an explosion with his free hand, even though none of them could see it.

"More like a collision," Pao added, uneasily. "Do you think something  _hit_ us? Oh God, are we under attack? I've never been under attack before. What do we do?"

"It could have been an accident," Jemma guessed weakly. "There are other labs above us, weapons testing-"

BOOM!

Pao screamed and Fitz felt Jemma yanking him towards her, his shoulder bumping into hers as they smacked together but she didn't let go of his hand.

"Shhh," she urged shrilly. "Pao you need to be quiet. Rule number one when we're under attack is  _quiet._ OK?"

"OK," she squeaked.

"It'll be alright," Fitz added, hoping to sound reassuring. "This base is filled with highly trained agents and the walls have been reinforced since our last siege. Whoever that is is going to be sorry."

"Fitz is absolutely right," Jemma chirped optimistically. "You have nothing to be worried about. We just need to sit tight."

Taken aback, he turned towards her voice, thinking he couldn't have possibly heard her right. She couldn't have called him Fitz, could she? He blinked in her direction, acutely aware of her hand in his own and his heart leaping into his throat in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

Then he realized that it must have been a mistake, a name called out on instinct. It had no meaning. It didn't make him the person to whom the name belonged. It didn't make him real.

"Let's find some light shall we?" she suggested, and he could hear the false lightness in her voice, that she was trying to stay positive for her friend.

The corners of his mouth drew up in a proud smile. "You must still keep torches somewhere in the lab, this isn't the first time the lights have gone out."

"They're in the desk underneath the computer," she told him. "It isn't far, just a few feet to the left of us. We can walk there all together."

Pao whimpered uneasily but when she spoke she sounded a bit less frightened than before. "The third drawer right?"

"Right," Jemma answered, approving as if this were all just a simulation and Pao had been the first to find the fire escape. "We can hide under the desk when we get there, just in case things start falling on us from the ceiling. Just to be safe. We only need to walk a few feet and-"

BOOM!

"-A-and.. and open the drawer," she finished, words squeaking at the end. "E-everyone ready?"

"Uh huh," Pao choked out.

"Should be no problem at all," Fitz said soothingly. He ran his thumb up and down the back of Jemma's hand, instinctively attempting to reassure her, and, to his surprise, she gave his a quick squeeze before they started forward.

The desk wasn't far and they reached it without incident. Jemma made Pao wait beneath it as they opened the drawer, passing out the torches. Then they switched them on to evaluate the damage.

"Th- that isn't gonna hold up much longer," Pao stammered, waving her light and peaking out her head to get a better look. "The support beam's been compromised."

Fitz passed his own beam upwards, horrified to find she was right. The damage was too great and the structure's integrity hadn't survived the multiple assaults from the surface. One or two more hits and it would give way, showering heavy bits of metal, concrete and glass down onto them.

"Do we still have the Iron Umbrella?" he asked, directing his beam to the ground in front of Jemma so that he could see her without blinding her.

"Its under your workbench," she told him, waving her own beam in its direction, even though he knew exactly where the bench in question was. He didn't have the time to wonder why she'd called it his. Her eyes narrowed and she fixed him with a stern look. "You aren't going out there."

"We'll need more than this desk if we're hit again," he argued stubbornly, gently easing his hand from her grip. "It wont take long. Besides, better me than a real person right?"

Her expression filled with pain and she shook her head fiercely. "You  _are_ a real person."

"She's right," Pao added firmly. "I've seen plenty of tables and you are  _not_ one of them."

If their words had been meant to stop him they'd been a poor choice. Instead they swelled his heart, filling it with determination.

' _Jemma thinks I'm a person,'_ he thought warmly. ' _She cares about me and Pao is my friend. I have to do this.'_

He smiled at them, slowly reaching out to graze his fingers down the side of Jemma's cheek, wishing that he was who he felt inside of him so that he could hold her, spend the rest of his life by her side.

"I'm not the right person though," he whispered. ' _However much I love you.'_  he added silently, not bitter, or angry but resolved and calmed by a growing sense of acceptance that left him more sad and hollow than he could ever remember being.

Her lip trembled and she opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but before she had a chance to stop him he bolted away, scampering across the lab.

He slid to his knees in front of the desk, yanking open the drawer and rummaging through it.

"Come back!" Jemma called, alarmed.

"Just a minute," he answered, digging through the array of gadgets, keenly aware that each passing second brought him closer to danger, but coming up empty each one. "Damn it, where is it?" he muttered.

"You need to come back," she warned anxiously. "It isn't safe…"

It wasn't going to be safe  _anywhere_  for long, and he needed to protect her and Pao.

"I think I see it," he mumbled, struggling to pull the desired cube out from beneath a thick rod. Who the hell had been in there making a mess? "I've almost... got it…  _c'mon-_ "

Another terrifyingly loud bang sent tremors up the walls and there was an ominous creak from somewhere above his head.

His head jerked up, eyes widening in horror as the beam of his torch caught a flash of the light fixture careening towards him and his stomach dropped as if he were falling.

Surely this was the end of him. All of them, he'd failed.

"FITZ!" Jemma's shriek reached his ears at the same moment she crashed into him, knocking them both sideways right before the enormous mass of glass shattered where he'd been only seconds before.

The force of the collision sent them tumbling to the ground and they held onto each other, stunned, before the remaining lights flickered back on.

With the room lit up, they pulled apart, breathing hard, their heart beats hammering on the inside of their chests.

"Jemma…" he breathed, distraughtly searching her for any signs of injury, combing over every part of her in a frantic dash.

Her eyes flared back at him and she dug her fingers into his arm. "I told you to come back!" she hissed, furious but remembering to keep her voice down. "That was incredibly  _reckless!_ You could have… Y-you could have..." A loud gasp blew out of her, her eyes misting before she shot forward to knot her arms around him again. "Are you OK?" she squeaked into his ear.

"Yes," he told her softly, returning her embrace when she bundled him up tighter, sniffing back tears. "Yes, I'm fine. You saved me."

' _She saved me. She could have died.'_ he thought, as confused and horrified as he was grateful.

Why had she done that? Even if she had come to see him as a human being, he was a stranger to her. What could his death have possibly meant? Was it simply the image it had given her? Was it possible that nearly witnessing the death of what  _looked_ to be her lost love had rattled her? Was it the thought of being forced to see him die again that had launched her forward? Was it that that kept her arms locked around him so tightly? Had it been what made her call out his name?

"Jemma?"

Skye's voice, calling to her from the doorway, seemed to awaken her from whatever had taken hold of her and she released him to leap to her feet, staring, confused, down at her hands as if they had betrayed her.

"Is everyone alright?" May asked brusquely, appearing next to Skye in the doorway, her expression unreadable.

Jemma's gaze darted between him and Pao before she nodded. "We're all fine. What happened?"

"Something came at us from the air," May answered, her eyes resting on Fitz for a heartbeat too long.

Pao tilted her head, crawling out from under the desk. "An aeroplane?" She gulped. "People are attacking us with  _aeroplanes?!_ Oh God, this was  _not_ covered in basic training."

Skye shook her head. "I don't think this was a plane."

If anything, that only seemed to frighten her more, and she inched towards Jemma, eyes wide.

Jemma frowned, as baffled as Fitz was, though he could tell that she was already deep in thought, trying to weave a picture of the attack from what they had experienced and what their friends were telling them now.

After a moment, he noticed May staring intently at him, boring into him until he shifted in discomfort. "Do you know what it might have been?" she asked flatly.

All the eyes in the room were suddenly trained on him and Fitz shook his head quickly. "No, I have no idea."

"He was with us the entire time," Jemma said, rushing to his defence, going so far as to take a step forward so that she stood partway between him and the others. "And he's under constant supervision," she added forcefully. "He wouldn't have  _been able_  to have anything to do with what just happened."

Skye's eyebrows rose in surprise but May met her gaze steadily, nodding after a moment.

"You're right, it probably wasn't him," she conceded, calm in a way that only May could be, like the glasslike surface of a lake on a windless day. "But I want him back in his cell and I want someone monitoring him at all times, just in case. We're going under lockdown anyway, until we figure out what just happened. Coulson's orders. No one comes in, and no one goes out."

Jemma huffed irritably, seeming as if she were about to protest, but Fitz stepped around her before she could get herself into anymore trouble because of him. He didn't know why she was so adamant to defend him. Perhaps she felt she owed him something, for what he'd said to her, or for trying to protect her and Pao, but she didn't. She didn't owe him anything and nothing was exactly what he was going to collect from this beautiful, selfless soul.

"I'll go back right now," he promised. "You can even send someone to come with me if you'd like."

"I'll go with you," May answered. She nodded her head towards the door, her voice turning soft and he thought he saw something close to a smile on her lips. "C'mon. I hear Coulson made you a kale salad for dinner."

Delightful. His favourite rubber flavoured vegetable. At least they were nice enough to prepare something for him.

May turned to leave, quietly speaking into Skye's ear, likely telling her to update the remaining two scientists with the details of the attack, before continuing out the door.

No one objected when he made to follow her and he didn't have the heart to look back over his shoulder at Jemma. He wasn't sure what scared him more, seeing the look on her face as she watched him leave, or seeing that she wasn't watching at all.

Because whatever had just happened, May was right. He wasn't one of them.

He didn't belong there, or anywhere else. He was a drifter with imaginary roots, ones he'd grown in a dream but which had no power to anchor him in the real world.

He was the echo of a memory that hadn't had the good sense to fade away and if the attacks really had had anything to do with him he didn't think he could stand it.

/-/-/

Skye caught up with her on her way back to her room, falling into pace beside her.

"Are you going to tell me what that was about?" she asked, looking straight ahead rather than towards her as she spoke.

"I- I don't know what's happening anymore than you do," she began defensively.

It wasn't a lie either, or even a deflection really. She didn't know what was happening. She didn't know who was attacking them or why anymore than she understood the war wreaking havoc on her own heart.

This time Skye turned her head, eyebrows raised in disbelief though her words were softened around the edges. "I'm talking about how you were clinging to that thing like a staticky sock," she clarified. "Jemma what's-"

"Please don't call him that," she mumbled before she could stop herself.

Skye's hand caught her shoulder and they both came to a halt. "What do you want me to call him then?" she asked gently.

She tried to answer but her throat wouldn't open and she shook her head, tears prickling her eyes. When her breath caught and a few dripped onto her eyelashes Skye stepped forward, pulling her into a hug that opened her throat again but also pushed out the tears like squeezing a well soaked sponge. She had grown porous and filled with far too much to keep inside of her and it all came pouring out at once onto her friend's shoulder.

"I don't know," she croaked. "Bu-but he's not… he's good. He's good the way F-Fitz was… I…" She sniffed and sucked in a cool breath, shuddering out a sob before her body allowed her to continue. "I saw it," told her, voice watery. "He tried to save us, he could have been ki-killed but he tried to save us anyway and before…"

She was left speechless by another string of sobs and Skye waited patiently, rubbing her back in silence as she sorted through her confusion. She must have thought she was losing it, that this had finally broken her, but it didn't feel like she was broken. The opposite, it felt as if her eyes had been fixed and she was seeing things for what they were at last.

"I don't want to hurt him anymore," she breathed. "We have to stop hurting him. Skye please," she begged. "I know this doesn't make any sense but… but…"

"OK."

She sniffed, pulling back in surprise. "OK?"

Skye nodded, looking almost as sad and tired as Jemma felt. "Fitz was my friend," she said sadly. "I miss him. And I know it's not the same as the way you miss him but…" She shrugged, pulling up a strained smile that might have been an attempt to stop the tears that welled in her own eyes. "I miss him. He was special because he good and kind even if it wasn't easy to be. And you're telling me that… whoever this is… he has that too?"

"Yes," Jemma whispered, light with relief. "Yes Skye, that's exactly what I mean."

"But…" She frowned, confused. "But you're still not sure what he is?"

Jemma hesitated, feeling the battle inside of her grow in its ferocity.

 _'It's Fitz,_ ' the voice in her head urged. ' _Tell her it's Fitz. It's him, he's back._ '

However there was another part of her, what she considered to be the more rational side of herself, which wasn't so certain.

"No," she made herself answer. This time it truly did feel like a lie.

Skye's hand came up, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze. "If I had to bet on anyone finding out, it'd be you. And whatever you find out, I'll be here OK."

This time it was Jemma who stepped forward, steadied by her friend's loyalty and filled with gratitude for her support. Her arms wrapped around Skye's shoulders in a tight hug which was immediately reciprocated.

"Thank you."

Whatever happened, she wasn't going to be alone. Which was so much more than Fitz had. It wasn't fair. He needed help, as much as she did and she was going to ensure that, from this moment on, he had it.

/-/-/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for betaing and suggesting I add the part with Skye at the end. You are the word master. 
> 
> The "Language" line is a reference to both Captain America in the Avengers 2 movie and comic book Jemma.


	12. It Happened (In a Dream)

Try as he might, Fitz couldn't get warm. He knew it wasn't the air, the thermostat read a toasty 24 degrees Celsius and, under the thick covers, he should have been comfortable, too hot even.

But he wasn't.

He couldn't tell if it was because of his fever, or if that had broken already and his body temperature was plummeting. He didn't know if he was actually cold, or if he just felt that way because his brain was telling him he needed to be warmer.

Whatever the case, tremors ran through him, muscles working in vain against the terrible chill. Everything hurt and his thoughts swam around him, vision blurred around the edges when he tried to open his eyes, and somewhere in the back of his mind the thought occurred to him that he might be dying but he didn't have the energy or the will to be afraid.

Maybe that was best. Maybe he'd been designed that way, by whoever had created him, made to expire when he accomplished whatever it was he'd been created for- or failed to comply.

He didn't mind that, being a failed experiment, if what he'd been sent to do was hurt the people he thought of as his friends. Maybe he was saving them, with this one final act of defiance.

If only it were quicker. Whoever had designed this must have had a streak of cruelty because what was happening to him bordered on unbearable.

His loneliness only added to his suffering, bringing in a new kind of pain that ached in his chest and burned behind his eyelids. He didn't want to be alone anymore, whatever he was he was close enough to human that he knew he wasn't meant to live that way.

The light to the room switched on and he groaned, shutting his eyes tight against the harsh stimuli before it was dimmed and hurried footsteps approached.

A hand brushed his cheek and it felt like a furnace, wonderful and warm.

He recognized the sharp intake of breath, the hazy face that he managed to crack open his eyes to see, and for one insane moment he forgot everything that he was and struggled to reach out to her, surprised when her hot hand wrapped around his own.

"We're going to need to raise the temperature in here," she ordered, turning her head towards whoever was hovering behind her, leaving no room for an argument in her fierce, urgent tone. "And I need an electric blanket- there are some upstairs in the walk in closet."

Feet scuffled across the floor before thudding up the stairs and as he wondered who the other person had been he felt himself lifted into a sitting position and bundled up, blanket around him, so that he rested against Jemma, his head supported by her shoulder.

On instinct, he squirmed into the warmth, helped by steady arms that kept him close. The tremors intensified, gnashing his teeth together, but already he felt stronger, his head clearing and it was such a relief that he couldn't help but mumble a string of thank yous under his breath, his stuttering voice thick with gratitude.

"It's OK," she whispered gently. "It's OK, we're going to warm you up." She rubbed his arm, spreading the heat from her hands and sparking more from the friction it created. "You'll be alright."

He nodded, closing his eyes and allowing his weight to sag against her, the fight leaving him as his shivers subsided. He couldn't move anymore but the pain was gone and, if he were still dying, at least now it would be in the arms of someone he loved, hearing her kind words murmured into his hair as she continued to rub his shoulder, his back, the side of his face.

Fuzzy darkness crept itself around him but just before he lost consciousness he thought he heard her calling his name, calling for him to stay awake. He was already so far gone though that it could have been all in his head.

/-/-/

A few hours later, Jemma lay with him beneath the heated blanket, much too warm but unwilling to spare herself the discomfort by leaving him without the extra source of heat.

It was what she'd told the others as she'd slipped underneath with him, responding to the room of raised eyebrows she'd felt behind her even though she couldn't tear her eyes from him to look at them. She was keeping him warm, stopping him from catching hypothermia, from damaging his heart, that was all this was.

It wasn't though, she knew it wasn't. She need to be near him, to feel his breathing beneath her arm, feel his heart beating beneath his chest. When they'd been left alone, she'd needed to beg him to come back, soft, pleading whispers against his ear.

She couldn't tell them any of that though, they wouldn't understand. How could they, when she didn't understand herself?

Why was she so desperate for him to open his eyes?

 _'You love him,'_ she realized with a start. _'You love this man, and he loves you. So where does that leave you? Where does that leave us?'_

She'd been wrong. He wasn't just a copy, he was Fitz. She wasn't sure how she knew but she was as certain of it as she was that the sun had risen that morning, that the moon pulled at the tides, the earth continued to spin on its axis. She knew it was him, the way she knew to breathe or to blink. It was as inherent as up and down, light and dark, things that happened with no need for an explanation.

But they had one. Up and down were caused by the pull of the earth on every mass within range of its gravitational field. Light was photons reaching her eyes, dark was their absence.

This though, there was no explanation for this, and it terrified her. It filled her with fear, to be in love with a dead man, to care so much about something that was such a mystery that it could disappear at any moment.

However love him she did, and she couldn't stop herself from pleading with him as she anchored him against her, as if holding him close enough would stop him from leaving again.

"Wake up," she whimpered, pushing her tears into his shoulder, hand clutching his tightly. "Please wake up. You can stay." She lifted her head to plant a frantic kiss on his icy cheek. "I want you to stay… I…" Her voice lowered, barely a whisper. "I love you. I've m-missed you so much. Fitz please. Please just wake up."

Was it her imagination, or had his hand gotten warmer? Taking in a shaky breath, she moved up once more to brush her lips over his cheek and the warmth she found made her melt in relief.

His face scrunched and he groaned, eyes cracking open, and she lifted herself onto her elbow so that they could see each other.

He seemed confused, his eyes foggy as he stared up at her. "Jemma?" he mumbled.

His voice was like the air after it rained, smelling of spring and the promise of hope. Fresh tears welled up, soaking her eyelashes and a smile pulled itself across her face. "I want you to stay with me," she told him again, louder now, determined, her palm moving over his cold, clammy forehead. "Stay."

His eyelids began to droop but he nodded hazily. "OK," he sighed, falling unconscious once more, and for a minute she panicked, worried that she was losing him again.

He continued to warm up however, and his breathing became stronger, colour returning to his cheeks, visible even under dim lights of the monitors.

Each hour after that, he got better. Every passing second it was as if he were filling in, like a ghost becoming a person and she sat up, watching over him and marveling at the transformation, as bewildered by it as she was by him, until morning came.

/-/-/

Fitz had dreamt of her, the night before, whispering in his ear, wonderful, impossible words that had filled the hollow places in his heart with hope. She'd told him to stay, that she loved him and she wanted him to stay.

And so he had, even though he now knew that it had all been a fantasy. Surely it had all been a dream, made real enough by his struggling consciousness to fool him into listening.

Not that he regretted it.

Right at that moment, he was about as content he thought he could be, being an unwanted copy of a dead man. He was eating his way through a tin of his favourite biscuits, his favourite person in the entire world perched beside him on his hospital bed as they watched Monkey Kingdom together, laughing with her like they belonged this way, together.

"You're going to give yourself a stomach ache," she scolded halfheartedly, grinning in amusement as he crunched another bite out of the sweet, buttery treat. "Maybe you should slow down."

"Maybe you should help me finish them," he suggested instead, grinning back at her and hoping his face wasn't too full of crumbs. "C'mon agent Simmons," he teased, waving one tantalizingly in front of her. "I know they're your favourite too."

She rolled her eyes, even as she gracefully accepted his offering. "I suppose I'd better not let you eat all of them," she conceded, but even as she sighed her eyes were smiling.

He chuckled, already on to his next one but deciding that he'd slow down, just to give her a chance to sneak a few more, not because she was right and his belly was starting to gurgle irritably at him. "You don't have to pretend it's for me, you're allowed to like biscuits."

She swallowed down her current mouthful, licking her lips to clear the crumbs before she spoke and he couldn't help staring, wishing he could touch her lips too. "Well… and you're allowed to call me Jemma you know," she told him and though she spoke lightly there was something behind her words that suggested that there was nothing light about her offer.

Fitz looked away, placing the half eaten biscuit down onto his napkin and lowering his chin to his chest. "You… it… that wouldn't be strange?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her shake her head, giggling nervously. "Strange? Ha, no.. of course not. Honestly you calling me agent Simmons is what's strange. I feel like I'm at some sort of formal meeting."

He turned his head towards her, smiling cautiously. "Yeah?"

Her head bobbed up and down enthusiastically. "Of course you can, we're friends, aren't we?"

That drew his smile up further, stretching it out so that he felt it in his cheeks and he nodded slowly along with her. "Yes, we are friends…. Jemma."

Friends. It was better than he could have hoped for.

She beamed at him, glowing with delight. "Good. Because- you probably know- I don't bake for just anyone."

"You don't," he agreed cheerfully. "Thank you… Jemma."

She chuckled at him and they returned their attention to the film, an amicable silence falling between them, broken here and there by Fitz's excited comments and Jemma's fond replies.

After another twenty minutes or so, she became fidgety, glancing back and forth between him and the television before she finally spoke, hesitant, shy almost.

"So… do…" She cleared her throat, trying again. "Do you remember everything?"

He turned to her, considering the question before he answered, wondering why it had been asked. Was she simply curious? Or were there things that his predecessor had left unanswered? As far as he knew, all the important things had been covered.

"I think so," he replied, watching her now guarded expression carefully, searching for a hint to her reasoning. He caught her eye, smiling reassuringly. "As far as I know anyway." He chuckled. "I can't know what I don't know right?"

Her mouth twitched up but her eyes weren't smiling anymore. "Yes, right, of course."

Fitz tilted his head, concern spreading across his chest. "Is there something you want to know?"

She couldn't seem to look at him as she spoke, tucking a stray lock behind her ear, the way she did when she was nervous or stressed. "I…" She took a deep breath, as if she were trying to suck courage from the air. "Do you remember our trip to Coney Island?" she blurted, fixing a wide eyed stare on him, scanning him as he scanned her. "When… the first time we went to New York? You absolutely had to go, you wanted to ride the Iron Man Rocket. We waited in line for two hours in the rain."

His eyebrows rose and he smirked at her, remembering the story. "I absolutely wanted to go?" he questioned incredulously. "Maybe you need to go through the CAT scan Jemma because you were the one who kept nagging me to come with you." His pitch raised unflatteringly. "'Oh Fitz, it's a world renown attraction, we have to go. It'll be fun.'" He shook his head. "I threw up after that bloody rollercoaster. Two hours waiting in the rain to have my lunch expelled from my body." However, as he thought of the day, the strongest thing he felt was a fluffy, untainted joy and he smiled. "I'm glad we- er… you went though," he corrected, catching himself and feeling the warmth flee out his skin. "He… he remembered that day all the time. It was a good day. Whatever he told you."

She was staring at him, her breaths shaking, as if she were frightened and she seemed to be fighting with herself, the pain in her eyes a startling contrast to their earlier sparkle, and it was all he could do not to reach out and take her hand.

"I'm sorry-" he said in a rush, voice rising in alarm.

"What if-" she squeaked over him.

"Are you two still watching that movie?"

In the same moment, the pair's heads whipped towards the door and they spotted Skye, picnic basket in hand, looking at them as if she'd caught them watching dirt during a fireworks show.

"Coulson just cleared us to go out into the exercise yard! As long as we stay within the fenced off area. And Fi-" She shook her head, waving her hand in his direction. "You look like you haven't seen the sun in… well, ever. Seriously, you're paler than Jemma, and that's saying something because she never goes outside. So..." At last she noticed their gaping mouths and she narrowed her eyes suspiciously, glancing between them. "Am I interrupting something?"

Fitz turned towards Jemma, unsure, but she was smiling at her friend, her previous turmoil hidden beneath beams of sunshine. "No, no not at all." She chirped. "And I do too go outside. I love going outside. In fact, I think going out in the exercise yard is a wonderful idea. Some sunshine and fresh air will do us all some good."

"Are you sure he meant me too?" Fitz asked, hesitating. He didn't want to give Coulson a reason to mistrust him, he might need his help to figure where he'd come from and besides he still thought of the man as a friend, even if he wasn't actually his agent.

Jemma rolled her eyes as if he were being ridiculous. "Of course he meant you too, you've been nothing but cooperative from the start. Besides you need the fresh air and you're under my care, so its my decision."

He couldn't help grinning at that, amused. "I'm under your care? Is this just another way for you to make me wear proper safety equipment and eat my vegetables?"

"After all the biscuits you've eaten I would highly recommend a few vegetables, yes," she shot back, but she was smiling too. "Right after some fresh air."

It was tempting. When was the last time he'd seen the sun? When was the last time Jemma had seen the sun? Skye was right, she looked greyer than she usually did, bordering on unhealthy. It was his concern, coupled with the confusing realization that she wanted him to go with her, that made him nod in reluctant agreement.

"Whooo hoo!" Skye did fist pump, turning on her heels and waltzing out as if she expected them to follow, parading behind her. "Let's get some sunshine!" She puffed out a breath, in disbelief of herself. "Man I have been underground way too long."

He and Jemma smiled at each other and she held out her hand for him to take. "I'm sure you remember the sun?"

"I think I remember something big, bright and yellow, yeah," he kidded, happily sliding his hand into hers, and they giggled together as they trailed behind their friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for all your help and advice with this chapter :D
> 
> The trip to Coney Island is a reference to Fringe. In season a 3 episode, Charlie uses a similar story to test whether or not Olivia is who she says she is.


	13. Something Big Bright and Yellow

It  _was_ gorgeous out. The moment Jemma stepped into the light she felt the sun on her face, her arms, in her hair, and it was wonderful. Despite what she'd insisted back down in the base, Skye was right, she couldn't remember the last time she'd been out under blue sky and she'd forgotten how good it felt.

Bubbling like a can of soda pop, she turned back to beam a smile at Fitz, but her face fell when she saw him flinching away from the light, squinting as if it were hurting him.

"Has it always been so bright?" he asked warily, remaining a good foot or two behind the line of shadow.

Skye rose an eyebrow, pausing in her prancing to shoot him a look. "Yeah, it's the sun, that's what it does. What is it bothering you? I have some sunglasses, if you need them." She rummaged through the sack, a brightly coloured bag of things she'd thought they'd need, pulling out chapstick and a deflated beach ball. "You never know!" she replied to Fitz and Jemma's questioning looks. "At least  _I_ came prepared to protect our new friend the vampire from the mean old sun."

"He isn't a vampire," Jemma mumbled uneasily, accepting the glasses from her and carefully gliding back towards Fitz, ignoring the goose bumps that shot up in protest on her arms when she left the light. "It's really bothering you isn't it?" she asked, watching keenly while he slipped them on, the muscles in his face visibly relaxing.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. What was he apologizing for? "Thank you. And thank you for the glasses Skye," he called past her.

She waved back cheerfully. "It's no big deal. Are you coming out or what?"

He started to move forward but Jemma held out a hand, stopping him. "Just a minute." If his eyes were sensitive to the sun, she could only guess at what it would do to his skin. A theory was forming in her head, one she didn't particularly like, and she had a feeling he was going to need protection. She turned back to Skye, eyes falling to her bag. "Did you happen to bring any sun block?"

"Yeah, SPF 40," she told her, pulling it out and holding it up for them to see.

"Jemma I don't think-" Fitz started to protest.

"Trust me," she said, moving her head to meet his gaze. "I really think you should put some on."

He stared back through the glasses, curious and maybe just a bit frightened. "Why?" he asked.

"I don't know yet," she replied honestly. Skye had wandered over and she took the bottle from her to hold out to him. "Trust me," she repeated, wishing she had the courage to tell him everything she was feeling in that moment, that when his hand brushed hers her skin buzzed and burned, that the tiny smile he gave her left her breathless.

"I'll always trust you," he told her, as if his faith in her were a given. A constant, like the speed of light.

He gave the bottle a squeeze, squirting the cream onto his arms, rubbing it into his ears and his nose.

"And the back of your neck," she reminded him, unable to keep herself from hovering around him, making sure he didn't miss anything.

He chuckled. "Anywhere else you think needs a greasy barrier?"

"No, I think you've covered everything," she answered seriously, circling around him to check.

While he wasn't looking, Skye met her eyes, silently asking her what was going on, but she could only shake her head and drop her gaze.

' _I don't know,'_ she thought. ' _I have no idea how this is happening.'_

"So," Skye chirped, evidently deciding to leave it for the moment. "What do you guys want to do out here? We have a beach ball…. uh… what do you  _do_  with a beach ball again?"

Jemma stepped out of the shade and Fitz trailed cautiously behind her, hesitating again at the very edge. He kicked at the dirt with the tip of his sneaker, staring at the ground in front of him, perplexed, frightened and sad all at once.

"Or… uh...maybe we can just start with walking into the yard…" Skye suggested, quickly losing her colourful cheer.

"What's the matter?" Jemma asked gently, moving towards him so that they stood less than a foot apart, watching his expression with concern.

He lifted his gaze, eyes shining, and he looked so lost, filled up with sorrow, that it was all she could do not to bundle him back up again, take him back inside where the sunshine couldn't hurt him.

That wouldn't solve the problem though, it wouldn't take away the confusion she saw gripping him now, so instead she lifted a hand to cup his cheek, shooting him a tiny smile when he lifted his own to place on top, leaning into her touch.

"It's OK, you can tell me," she assured him.

He broke eye contact, looking past her as he gently took her arm to lower her hand away from his face, letting her tangle her fingers into his halfway down and clutching her tightly while he studied the world outside.

"It's… It's not the way I remember it," he told her, so low she wasn't sure that Skye could hear, though their friend waited patiently beyond, letting him speak however he wanted to. He sucked in a sharp breath, a tremor running through him. "Everything else is the way I remember it, you, Skye, the Playground… things have moved around… the… the…" He glanced quickly at her before looking away again. "Your hair is longer, but… but it's still… you're still you and the Playground is still the Playground but this…" His voice broke and he took a step back, shaking his head and pulling his hand from her grip. "It's the  _sun_ Jemma, the bloody sun! Why… I… What the hell  _am I?!_ "

Once again, she stepped into the dark with him, taking his face between her hands and waiting until his eyes met hers, her heart breaking for him and yet somehow letting her find words to comfort him, telling her what to do like a deep seated instinct.

"You're a man," she said firmly. "And you're my friend, and you're kind and good and you remember the name of every monkey species in the film we watched together. So your eyes are a bit sensitive, that's alright," She smiled encouragingly. "That's  _OK._ " After a moment's hesitation, briefly assessing whether or not it would help if she acknowledged his obvious fear, she softly added. "And I won't let anything happen to you. We're going to figure out how you ended up here and I  _promise_ that no matter what I'll protect you."

With a start, she realized that she meant that. Whatever he'd been created  _for_ all he wanted to do was exist in peace. He didn't want to hurt her, or anyone, and she certainly didn't want anything to hurt him. Wherever he came from, he was Fitz and he needed her.

"You will?" he asked. In his desperation, he wasn't even attempting to deny the fact that he was frightened.

Completely aware that Skye stood only a short distance away, able to hear everything they were saying, she smiled at him again, allowing her affection to show on her face, trying as best she could to show him into her heart. "I will."

He smiled too, stars in his eyes as he stared back at her. "Thank you. For everything."

It didn't really feel right, accepting thanks for all the awful things she'd allowed to happen to him, but this wasn't about how she felt so she nodded and held out her hands, inviting his back. "C'mon. It's OK, we'll do this together."

Encouraged, he took them, his own soft and dry, still a bit cold but far warmer than they'd been as he'd slept. She tiptoed backwards and, cautiously, he followed, inching forward until his arm was bathed in daylight, then his nose, his face, his hair. Slowly, step by step, she brought him into the light until the shade was several feet behind them and they stopped, hands locked between them as he took in the new sensation and her own skin practically purred in satisfaction at the return to warmth.

"How does it feel?" she asked softly, watching him, heart in her throat, while he processed it all.

After a few seconds he looked up, breaking into a wide grin that she instantly returned.

"It feels  _good,_ " he proclaimed joyfully. "It's… it's so  _warm_ and… Jemma I remember this, I remember this feeling. It's the same!" He turned to Skye, absolutely ecstatic. "Do you still want to try out that beach ball?"

"I'm still not sure what we're suppose to  _do_ with it," she laughed, but she took it out anyway, blowing into the tiny plastic tube to inflate the brightly coloured ball. " But yeah, sure," she added between puffs, speaking through the tube between her teeth.

When she was through inflating it she tossed it his way and he caught it lightly between his hands in a smooth, easy motion.

"Hey look, you can catch," Skye said, grinning at him. "I bet that's the first time you've done that."

Maybe it was, Jemma reflected. But his body knew how to respond anyway because he remembered catching balls even if he hadn't ever actually done it. It was a new body with an old… what? An old mind? An old  _soul?_

That was ridiculous, complete nonsense.

And yet here he was, turning her legs to noodles and her heart to putty in his hands.

"Jemma?" he called, his body pivoting towards her, preparing to throw. Her name sounded right on his lips, his eyes meeting hers the same way they always had.

She smiled at him and rose her arms, snatching it easily from the air when he tossed it over, before passing it on to Skye. Pleased, she noted that he threw the same way too, his arms and shoulders moving in the same familiar pattern.

"What do we call you?" Skye asked, spinning on her heels to throw the ball towards him again. "I mean, you need a name don't you?"

"I'm probably numbered actually," he mumbled unhappily, expression rapidly clouding and he kept the ball for long moment, worrying the plastic between his fingers. "Isn't that what they do with experiments?"

Jemma scoffed, shaking her head and trying not to let his sorrow cloud her too. "That's nonsense, we named the DWARFs. We name all of our creations. And besides, you're made from the same stuff as both of us, I've seen it, I've done countless tests. You're as human as anyone." She hesitated, the final wisps of doubt grabbing at the thing she wanted to say next, cruel, sharp little fingers that pricked as she fought them off. "And your name is Fitz."

"I'm not-" he protested at once, voice rough with pain.

"It's OK," she assured him. "It's your name, no one's going to take it away from you."

His eyes studied her face, careful and hopeful at once. "Yeah?"

' _Of course it is sweetheart,'_ she thought, despairing at how lost he was and angry with herself for being too afraid to lead him home. "Yes it is," she whispered.

He looked back at her, brimming over with what could have only been love, and she stared back, bursting with the very same thing, absorbed in the way the tiniest of smiles had lifted his mouth and the light turned his hair to gold.

After what must have been over a minute, Skye coughed, reminding the pair of them that she was still standing only a few feet away, witness to something only they could truly see.

"Ah… right." Fitz blushed, nervously fumbling with the ball before passing it to Jemma, resuming their game.

Her own cheeks hummed splendidly, hot from the blood rushing past her skin and singing along with her merry heart.

After a minute or two of awkward silence, he risked lowering the glasses, peeking over the tops only to wince at the incoming light, quickly sliding them back up his nose.

"You know, I bet Jemma could make us a tarp that acted like a giant pair of sunglasses," Skye remarked, noticing his discomfort. "Then you wouldn't have to wear those things- not that you don't look cool."

"Very cool," Jemma agreed fondly, warmed by the shy smile that brought to his face. "But Skye's right, I probably could, it'd be better for everyone actually. I'd just need to find a material light enough to be supported by the fencing that would let in light but also protect against UV radiation - perhaps we could add benzophenone for that..."

"You could add cloaking to it as well, so we could go outside even when we're under lockdown," Fitz suggested. "It wouldn't be as flexible but-"

"We really wouldn't need it to be," they finished together, beaming at each other.

They spent the next half hour discussing the construction plans for what Fitz was adamant on naming the No-Sun-Roof. Skye followed the conversation alright at first, but she soon became bogged down by the more technical terms, though that didn't seem to bother her in the slightest. The more they talked, the happier she seemed to grow, looking between them with quiet delight, like being home again after a long journey.

It felt like home to Jemma too, familiar and good, like she belonged there, like she and this man belonged together. She'd been apart from her love for far too long, she'd almost forgotten this feeling, how happy he'd made her.

And now, by some miracle he was back. He was back and she loved him just as much and as unshakably as the day she'd lost him.

Now if only she could find the courage to tell him that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to notapepper for your help with this chapter and for helping improve the No-Sun Roof :D
> 
> Benzophenone is a preservative used in clear plastic packaging of products like soap to protect the product from discoloration or other damage from UV radiation (From the book 'Why There's Antifreeze in Your Toothpaste' which is actually pretty cool). I'm not 100% sure it'd be the best thing for them to use for their sunroof, but I stumbled upon it as I was working on that part and I thought it fit nicely :D


	14. It Doesn't Make Sense but it's True

Night had fallen that same day, the darkness forcing the three of them to go indoors where they played card games and ate snacks until well past midnight. It felt like those times, when Jemma had been a little girl and her parents had known that school would be cancelled the next day, giving her an unforeseen holiday. It was giggles and grins and no rules, no worries, only fun and extra ice cream.

Tomorrow wasn't a holiday, but today felt like a celebration. They were together again, not just her and Fitz, but Fitz and Skye also. All of them were together and the world was right.

Or at least  _almost._ She still wanted to kiss him, to hold him and tell him she'd missed him and she loved him so much, but she was terrified. Terrified he wouldn't believe her, that he'd be angry that she'd rejected him before, that those three little words would shatter whatever it was they had happening right then and she'd wake up from whatever desperate dream this was.

One night, she told herself. One night with him by her side. She'd give herself that before she risked it all, because she was going to, because she couldn't stand to see him so miserable not knowing who he was. He didn't deserve that, no one did.

Fitz was exhausted though, she'd been allowing him to lean on her for nearly an hour as they marathoned their way through the last three Harry Potter movies, his eyes barely managing to stay open long enough for him to see the final scene of  _The Deathly Hallows, part 1_  from his place beside her on the sofa. His fever was gone, but he still seemed to be feeling the dwindling exhaustion that it had left it its wake.

At last he'd succumbed and fallen asleep, his head weighing on her shoulder, and she carefully readjusted herself so she could support him better, laying back against the cushion to support her own weight as well. His breathing remained deep and even and he didn't stir, even when he slowly moved her head to kiss his curls, something she was still working up the courage to do while he was awake.

Which, she knew, would seem ridiculous to anyone she told. She'd kissed him countless times, his head, his nose, his lips. That was before though, before all of this madness had torn them away from each other, before she'd been so cruel to him. What right did she have to kiss the cheeks of a man she'd once shouted such poison at?

"You really think it's him, don't you?" Skye murmured, watching the pair of them carefully, her expression turned guarded.

Jemma's eyebrows rose in surprise. "You don't?"

She'd been acting as if he were all day, teasing and joking with him, even calling him by his name. Perhaps it had all been a front, for Jemma's sake, or perhaps she'd wanted to believe it as much as Jemma did.

"I just want to be sure," she explained quickly, eyes running over him once more before returning to meet hers. "You were getting better, you…" She chewed her lip, eyes shining. "You were coming back to us. I just don't want to see you get hurt again."

"I…" She sighed, stopping herself from saying ' _I won't'_ because she knew that wasn't a satisfactory answer.

It wasn't the whole story and the woman sitting across from them, who'd grieved too, for the man in her arms, and who'd almost lost both of her best friends, should know why she wasn't about to lose them again. She'd been Jemma's guardian angel for over a year, even when she'd tried to push her- and everyone else- away. She deserved at least to know the truth.

"It's Fitz," she told her firmly. "I know it's him. I don't understand how, but I know." She looked back down at him, radiating affection at the sight of his peaceful, sleeping face. "It can't be an imitation, he's too perfect."

Glancing back up, she caught Skye smirking at her, clearly biting back a giggle, and she rolled her eyes because that wasn't what she'd meant (even if it might have been halfway true. No one was perfect in the strictest sense of the word, but he was perfect to her.)

"He doesn't just look like him," she went on. "He responds in the exact same way, has the same mannerisms-" His fingers twitched against her arm and she smiled. "-even when he's sleeping. He has his heart, his mind, when he speaks to me I hear  _him._  And I know it sounds ridiculous, because people don't come back from the dead- not usually, but we  _know_ that it isn't impossible. What  _is_ impossible, is creating such an exact copy. The level of detail…" She paused, gently flattening his hair with her free hand as she tried to collect her thoughts.

That wasn't the whole truth either. This wasn't only something she'd thought out, it wasn't calculated.

"And… and I see him Skye," she admitted quietly. "I look into his eyes and I  _know._ "

She chewed at her bottom lip, unable to face her friend as she wondered if she sounded crazy, or desperate, or both. She was scared, so scared, of what she was feeling, of being wrong, but something inside of her, an instinct that she couldn't quite explain, was telling her that she wasn't.

"OK."

At her friend's easy acceptance, Jemma's head snapped up in surprise.

"OK?" she asked hesitantly, searching her face for any ounce of doubt. "You believe me?"

Skye chuckled softly, shaking her head as if the answer should be obvious. "No one knew him better than you. If you say it's Fitz, then it's gotta be him." She shook her head again, grinning at him in amazement. "He came back."

Jemma smiled too, her heart singing with joy. "He did. We'll need to figure out  _how_ obviously-"

" _Obviously_ ," Skye teased, scrunching her nose in amusement, and she rolled her eyes at her again.

"-but not before we figure out what's making him sick."

Skye frowned, turning somber. "Do you think the two could be related?"

"That whatever brought him back is doing this?" Jemma guessed, feeling dark clouds gathering above them. "I don't know. I hope not. Perhaps these are simply side effects… growing pains as it were."

"I hope so," Skye mumbled. "He does seem to be getting better."

She nodded enthusiastically, forcing a smile to push aside the knot of worry that had grown in her gut. "He's much better than he was last night, he probably just needs some rest, some good food… maybe a night or two outside that awful cell…"

"Maybe he just needed a hug," Skye suggested sympathetically, her eyes narrowing as another thought occurred to her. "What are we going to tell the others?"

Jemma puffed out a breath, at a loss. "The truth I suppose."

"I guess Coulson really isn't someone who can argue against people coming back from the dead," she pointed out fairly.

Jemma chuckled. "That would be a bit hypocritical of him wouldn't it?"

Smiling softly, she turned back to Fitz, grazing the backs of her fingers down the side of his face with a gentle fondness, trying hard to keep back the incredulous tears of joy that waited under her eyelids.

_He came back. My sweetheart came back to us._

Her heart sank, however, when she reached the spot where his jaw met his neck, feeling him wince and squirm further into her shoulder as her skin met his, unconsciously seeking out her protection as he slept. The poor thing must have been completely wiped out but worse than his obvious exhaustion was the angry red skin that seemed to have crawled up his neck, lightly blistered as if it had been scalded.

"Oh no," she breathed, carefully tilting his head for a better look. "How did… I was  _sure_ he'd covered everything…"

"What are you talking about?" Skye asked, rising to investigate with a look of concern. She grit her teeth when she saw the burn. "Ouch, how did that happen?"

"It's going to hurt when he wakes up," she fretted. "I shouldn't have let us stay out for so long, I should have  _known._ He's never been outside in the daylight before…"

Skye frowned, tilting her head. "What do you mean? I've seen him out in the daylight plenty of times and, you know, he burns, but not like  _this_." She gestured towards his neck.

A slow, shaky breath escaped her and Jemma felt her heart squeeze tightly in her chest, frightened again and debating how much to tell her friend. Would she understand? Did  _she_ understand herself? She'd been suspecting it for the past few days, pieces slowly clicking together, and it wasn't until only a few hours ago that the final one clicked into place, that she'd realized what the unidentified substance they'd found him covered in actually was.

However that was only a piece of it all. The slime, in its own incredible way, made sense, but the rest? The slime held the key to why he'd burned in the sun but how he knew her, how he'd come back to her, was something else entirely. It bordered on magic and fantasy and it was certainly well within the realm of what Jemma Simmons did  _not_ believe in.

Or at least not until now.

"D-do you remember what… what that man said?" she asked slowly, overtaken by a sudden need to study every inch of Fitz's face, sweep her gaze across it over and over until she had it memorized again, unable to meet her friend eyes as she spoke. "The one who… who…" Her voice wobbled and as hard as she tried she couldn't say it. It had haunted her for far too long.

_The man who killed him._

"I know who you mean," Skye said gently.

She swallowed, nodding gratefully. "He said he'd saved him. That he put his soul somewhere safe. He said his  _soul_ Skye… what…" The last word turned into a squeak and she closed her eyes, concentrating, focused on reining in her emotions, drawing on months of practice. "I know this sounds ridiculous… it is ridiculous… impossible but… but what if-"

The shrill screech of an alarm cut her off and her stomach clenched fearfully as the walls were blanketed in blinking red light and a familiar explosion rumbled the room.

It was happening again. The Playground was under attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Fitz and his baby skin. I bet what happened is starting to piece together? Hopefully :P 
> 
> Thanks to notappeper for betaing this chapter. And speaking of babies if you haven't yet you should go check out her Jemma is pregnant fic :D It's so great.


	15. A Monkey in a Spaceship

At the sound of the alarm Fitz shot up, his head nearly colliding with Jemma's chin while Skye sprung to her feet, hands out, ready.

May appeared in the doorway, following her raised gun which she quickly lowered at the sight of them in the same moment that Skye lowered her arms.

"Skye, Simmons, we need you upstairs," she barked, jerking her head in the direction of the stairwell. "It's happening again." Her eyes fell on Fitz and she tilted her head in the other direction. "And you need to get back in your cell. Now."

"May wait…" Skye began, stepping forward.

"No," Jemma protested sharply, feeling a need for more force than Skye was putting forth, aghast at what May was asking them to do."No, he's staying with us." She drew herself up to her full height, burning with determination as she attempted to stare down the taller woman.

She was  _not_ going to lose Fitz again.

"He's what they want," May told her flatly, staring, unblinking, back at her. "We need to hide him."

_Fitz? They wanted Fitz?_

Jemma's eyebrows came together in a frown and she felt her shoulders drop, confused. "What?"

"Why?" Fitz asked, unreadable as he stepped around her. She let him pass, the fire startled out of her, though she kept a close eye on him. "What do they want with me?"

"They didn't say," May told him, softening just a little.

Jemma had seen that look before. May looked at Skye that way sometimes, and Jemma herself and… she'd looked at Fitz like that, before he'd been taken from them, before he'd come back from the dead. Perhaps she could see it too, who he was. Perhaps she was on their side.

"They sent us a message," May went on calmly. "It read 'Give us the reborn.'"

Fitz swallowed, his eyes darkening, and folded his arms across his chest. "So that's what they're calling me?" he muttered. His mouth twitched but he lifted his chin, blazing as brightly with courage as he always had as he spoke. "Then give me to them."

May's head tilted to the side and she sighed, sympathetic now, though Jemma hardly noticed. She was too busy rounding on Fitz, furious and protective at once. Fear making her snap at him.

"Are you mad?!" she demanded shrilly.

"No, I'm not, thanks for asking," he retorted, just as sharp. "Why shouldn't you give me up? I'm putting everyone here in danger." He pivoted so that he was facing May and Jemma wanted to scream at how stupidly noble he was being. "It'll make them stop won't it?" he asked expectantly.

Another sigh. "We don't know that."

"But it might," he pressed stubbornly.

Jemma shook her head, in complete disbelief at what she was hearing. Wasn't he worried about what they would do to him? Didn't he care? Her own heart felt as if it could burst from her chest at any moment, swollen and thumping against her ribcage.

Her eyes burned. "Fitz-" she breathed, pleading now.

"I'm not Fitz!" he barked angrily, whipping back around. She winced and his ferocity instantly melted away, leaving him gentle, sad. "I want to be, but I'm  _not_ and today…" He seemed on the verge of tears but he fought them back valiantly. "It was  _good_ , I was  _happy_ but it wasn't real. I'm not…" His voice broke and he stopped, taking a long, trembling breath. "Let me go Jemma."

' _No.'_ She shook her head roughly but her throat was too tight for her to speak. ' _No!'_

She'd been trying to do that for almost a year and half, to let him go, and she almost had.  _Almost._ And she really thought that she could have, or at least she could have found a way to move on and be happy, but that was before, that was when he'd been  _gone._ He wasn't gone now, he was right there and he was real and he had just as much right to exist as any of them, wherever he'd come from.

"You're here," she said quietly, remembering his words to her down in the cell, in the moment that she'd finally seen him for what he was. "It doesn't matter what you are, you're here, in the world with everyone else and it needs you in it. It's still beautiful, there's still sunshine, even if it's different."

His hand moved up towards his neck and she knew he'd noticed the sunburn. She hoped she hadn't made a mistake, reminding him of what had caused it.

"We're not letting them take you," Skye added, stepping forward to stand beside Jemma. "You're under SHIELD's protection, and that means something."

He looked between them, and her heart broke at how surprised he was that they would be so willing to protect him. "I don't want anyone getting hurt because of me," he mumbled, dropping his gaze.

"It wouldn't be because of you," May said simply. "Skye's right, SHIELD doesn't give up good people."

That pulled out a quick, twitch of a smile but still he hesitated, feet frozen in place.

"Please," Jemma whispered, breathless from the weight on her chest. It was low, she knew before she said it that it bordered on manipulation, but she needed to keep him safe. "Please, don't make me lose you a second time."

They weren't crocodile tears, but they served the same purpose, and when their eyes met she knew she had him. The relief was too sweet for her to feel her guilt.

Very slowly, without breaking eye contact, he nodded. "I won't," he vowed quietly.

It was all May needed to leap into action. "Good," she said curtly. "Skye, come with me, Simmons, keep him safe."

Jemma reached down to take his hand, encouraged when he didn't pull it away and nodded resolutely. "I will."

/-/-/

They ran, hand in hand, down the halls of the Playground. Perhaps, unjoined, they may have been faster but she couldn't bring herself to let him go, not again.

 _Not again. Never again. No one is hurting you this time._ The mantra repeated itself, over and over inside her head, louder than the screeching alarms. ' _I won't let them take you again.'_

Briefly, she debated whether she had time to grab a weapon, a gun, an ICER,  _anything_ that would let them defend themselves, but the walls were shaking again and whoever - or whatever- this was could be only minutes away from breaching the base.

It wasn't a risk they had time for.

At last they reached the basement door and she made Fitz go first, following so close she had to watch she didn't clip his heels as they sped down the staircase.

"Get in the cell," she instructed curtly when they reached the bottom, careful to seal the top door behind them before spinning around to face him. "I'll watch the stairwell."

He shook his head, refusing to budge. "No, not without you."

There he was, staring back at her with those smoldering blue embers, loyal to a fault. It awoke something inside of her, made her heart shudder the way only he could. How could she have ever thought he could be anyone else?

"The controls won't work from the inside of it," she reminded him urgently, feeling as if their enemies were coming closer each passing second. Perhaps they were. "We wouldn't be able to lock ourselves in."

Still he didn't move.

"I'll be fine," she promised, growing in desperation. "No one is getting past May and Skye. This is just a precaution."

That was a lie and they both knew it. He remained where he was, crossing his arms over his chest.

"The walls may cloak whatever it is that allows them to track you," she tried, appealing to his sense of reason. "That could be why they didn't come until you started spending more time outside. This is safer for  _both_ of us."

"What if they don't?" he demanded.

"And what if they  _do?!_ " she exclaimed, exasperated. "Fitz  _please,_ just trust me."

Their eyes met and she stared him down, determined to keep him safe even if it meant she needed to find a way to be more stubborn than he was. At last he nodded, breaking contact and stepping back.

"I always trust you," he murmured, moving into the cell at last. He lifted his head to meet her gaze once more as she put up the wall, clear for the time being. "Just…please be careful."

She nodded, sighing with relief. "I will be."

/-/-/

Nearly twenty minutes later, they were both sitting on the ground, leaning against the opposite sides of the barrier, backs only a few millimeters from touching, kept apart by it in body, but not in soul.

Fitz wasn't sure how it had happened, but he could sense that she grown to care for him, could  _see it_ in her actions and the way she treated him. Why, he didn't quite understand, but he was grateful for it none-the-less.

He cared for her too, as much as he could remember the man before him caring about her. He loved her like he had too, which he knew would only lead to heartache. Jemma wouldn't love him back. For all her kindness, despite her surprising friendship, he was certain that it was the original whom she wanted and as well formed as he was, he was still just a copy.

She was brave though, so brave, listening calmly to the rumbles above as if they were only thunder, murmuring quietly that it was going to be OK, and it made him brave too.

Made him feel as if he were falling in love with her all over again.

"Thank you," he said after the tremors seemed to have taken a pause. "For everything, you've been really kind to me."

She scoffed. "I haven't. You don't need to thank me for that."

Why did she sound so guilty?

"But you have," he pressed, continuing on even as her shoulders stiffened and she grew still. "You were upset, at first, that's understandable. It's OK, really it is. You've done so much for me and I know I'm just a copy-"

"No," she objected firmly. "No you're more than that. I- I need to tell you… I haven't been entirely honest with you… I was scared-"

"That's OK," he assured her quickly. "I understand. I would have been too."

She sighed. "No… no you don't." Her voice wobbled and his heart clenched as he realized she was on the verge of tears. "I'm so sorry Fitz… I… it's just that…" She took another shaky breath, working up the courage to continue, but he couldn't stand letting her beat herself up for this. It was beyond both of them, her initial reaction to him was nothing to be ashamed of.

"You don't have to apologize, I'm not angry with you," he promised. "It isn't your fault that-"

Without warning, a ball of light burned into existence in the center of the cell, flickering and hot like fire and shocking him into silence.

A figure appeared in a haze of orange light, a woman, almost. Tall with milky blue skin and dark whiteless eyes. She was dressed like an Asgardian but Fitz knew that that wasn't what she was.

Jemma must have heard his gasp behind her because she was on her feet and turned around in one swift motion, tablet in hand as she hastily tapped the controls.

And yet the wall between them remained.

"It won't work." Though the woman spoke to Jemma, her eyes were on Fitz, sparkling with an unsettling hunger. "My but aren't you  _fascinating,_ " she mumbled under her breath..

"Leave us alone," he spat, pressing his back up against the barrier as Jemma continued her frantic battle with the tablet.

"You have no idea what you are, do you?" she cooed, taking another step forward, unconcerned when he raised up his arms in defence. "You're a miracle, you're the future. The beginning of a new age." She smiled, chuckling. "And yet you have no idea. A monkey in a spaceship. Do you remember that your kind sent animals first? Perhaps we aren't so different."

She stopped about two feet away, marveling at him. "It worked," she breathed.

"Stay away from him," Jemma growled. "Take down the barrier right now!"

The woman wasn't listening and in the time it took for her to stare at him, another collision shook the base.

"Stop attacking them!" he demanded. "Leave them alone."

"I will if you come with me." She held out her hand, inviting, and rose an eyebrow. "Don't you want to find out what you are?"

' _Not from you, you goggling weirdo,'_  he thought hotly, but her first offer had more than tempted him.

"You'll leave?" he asked. "You'll stop attacking the Playground?"

"Fitz, no." Jemma whispered behind him. Her voice cracked, like her throat was closing on her, but he didn't falter.

' _I'm not Fitz.'_

The woman nodded, her smile widening as they both realized that he was about to comply. What did it matter anyway, if he didn't? There was no escape from this.

"You have a deal then," he answered, steadily meeting the gaze of his adversary, frightened but resolved as he reached out his hand.

"NO!" Jemma was screaming now, sounding like ice and sandpaper and pain. "No, please don't! I-"

He didn't hear the end of whatever she was trying to say. The instant his fingers touched the woman's palm he felt himself being ripped from where he stood, squeezed and twisted for only half a second before he was standing somewhere else.

Somewhere very far away from Jemma's anguished cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for betaing this chapter :D You're out of this world :P
> 
> The title of this chapter is reference to something Garrett said at some point in season 1 about putting monkeys in those empty rockets they were launching into space (the ones that were supposed to have 0-84s or something). I think they actually did send monkeys into space, but the first animal in space was a dog. Poor little thing :(
> 
> Also the way they teleport is based off the way they do it in Harry Potter. Except they're aliens instead of witches/wizards :P


	16. Gone

**About 1.5 Years Earlier**

It was the fourth time that morning that Jemma had checked her phone, hoping for a message from Fitz. Since the sun had risen, he'd been in her thoughts more than usual, likely because a part of her knew that he should have been with her already, that he was suppose to be home. It was as if her heart were complaining to her, feeling cheated out of what should have been their reunion.

There was a restlessness there too, along with the excitement, a jittery ball of nerves just under her stomach, bouncing around and setting off static, making her eyes dart towards her silent phone. She wasn't just excited that he was coming home, she was  _nervous_ that he hadn't made contact yet.

Which was absolutely ridiculous.

' _Patience,'_ she told herself, doing her best to shake off the irritating feeling. ' _He'll be back soon enough, then you can show him how far you've progressed on the project. Won't he be surprised!"_

She wondered what he'd think of the new formula she'd designed for their Spray-n-Track microdrones. A week ago he'd suggested they have smaller cartridges, spray a smaller dose of scentless tracker odour onto the target, his argument being that a lighter spray would be less noticeable. Of course that meant that  _she'd_ be the one needing to further concentrate the tracker solution- a feat easier said than done.

_Yeah, well if you can't do it, at least then we'll know for sure that it's impossible._

Her cheeks still warmed at the memory of his fond encouragement, at how highly he thought of her abilities, of her as a whole. The way he looked at her, like daydreams and Christmas morning, made her wonder sometimes how she'd gotten so lucky, to fall in love with such an amazing, incredible person who was as enamoured with her as she was with him.

Sometimes people were just lucky, she supposed. Though it hadn't all been chance, they'd worked hard to find each other again, to understand their feelings for each other, to change and mend their once broken relationship because to one another, they were worth all the effort ten times over.

She'd fought to find her way back to him over and over, and she'd do it again, a hundred times if she needed to, because what they had now was precious and beautiful. She had his kiss on her cheek before she shut her eyes at night, his chest rising and falling beneath her ear in gentle breaths or chortling laughter. She had his hand to hold when she was frightened and his arms around her when she cried.

There were hours spent inventing, pulling ideas from the tangle of knowledge between them, and there were nights spent tangled in each other. There were rare Saturday mornings spent in pajamas with cereal and video games and scattered midnights spent charting the sky.

She loved him with the brightness of a supernova and the soft warmth of the sun in a spring afternoon and, incredibly, he loved her too.

It was early, not yet past seven thirty in the morning, and she was sitting in the kitchen, nearly done with her tea, her breakfast was completely eaten. Soon it would be time to head to the lab to continue her work from the previous night. Skye sat across from her, still on her second slice of peanut buttered toast.

Her eyebrows rose questioningly when Jemma set the phone back down onto the table.

"Still nothing?" she guessed.

Jemma shook her head. "Not yet, but it's early"

"He's probably still asleep," Skye mused. She leaned back in her chair, head lolling to the side while her arms spread out in a very unflattering impression of a sleeping human and Jemma rolled her eyes.

"He doesn't sleep like that," she told her. "Actually, I don't think anyone sleeps like that," she added, amused when Skye's tongue stuck out the side of her mouth.

She sat back up, giggling. "OK then how does he sleep?" Her eyebrows wiggled. "Is he a cuddler? He seems like a cuddler."

Smiling, Jemma was about to reply when they heard the sound of shuffling footsteps and Coulson appeared in the doorway, looking sick to his stomach. Her face fell at his expression and she felt the air in the room thicken, taking on an electrical charge.

Something was very wrong.

"Sir?" she asked, concerned. "Is everything alright?"

His eyes grew bright and he swallowed before taking a deep breath through his nose, he seemed unsure what to say, the information too heavy to pull out, and his hesitation made her stomach sink, her breakfast sitting like a stone at the bottom.

Skye frowned, rising to her feet. "Coulson what's happening?"

His eyes darted between them before resting on Jemma and suddenly, without really being able to explain it, she had a feeling she knew what was happening. Time froze, the world stopped turning, and everything was still.

She knew, but she needed to ask, to hear him say it.

"Where's Fitz?" she breathed. Skye turned to her in surprise but Coulson seemed to have been expecting her question.

On the outside she was eerily calm however inside she was screaming, panicked as if she'd been sealed into a small, airtight room.

_No, no not him. Please, he has to be alright._

Coulson shook his head miserably, his mouth opening and closing a few times before at last he found the strength to say what he needed to.

"They found a man at the hotel he was staying at," he said slowly, each word laced with doom. "He had ID in his pocket. They think it's him but… but they need someone to come…" Another deep breath. "They need someone to come and identify the body."

It was as if she'd been dropped from a thousand feet in the air. She was falling, dizzy, unable to move, to breathe because the wind kept whipping against her.

"A... a body?" Skye's hands flew to her mouth and tears gathered in her eyes, head twitching from side to side in pained denial. "No… no it's not… Oh my God…. have you seen…?" Her voice broke and she choked out a whimper, stumbling back onto her chair.

"I haven't seen him," Coulson told her, hollowed with sorrow. "But he matches the picture on his ID. It's him… we just need to confirm it."

"When do we leave?" Jemma asked. Her throat was dry, constricting so that her words came out strained and low.

Skye sniffed beside her as she stood up, chest heaving as the air screaming past her filled her up. It was inside her, loud and angry and scared, blurring everything else and making her limbs buzz.

"I need to see him," she said, louder now, with more ferocity that she'd intended.

"We're taking the Quinjet," Coulson answered. "It's in the-"

But she didn't hear the end because she knew where it was and suddenly there was nothing else. There was only Fitz, maybe dead,  _probably_ dead, and the slim chance that it was someone else. He was dead and alive at the same time, Schrödinger's cat, and she couldn't stand it. Before her leader could finish his sentence she was out the door and halfway sprinting for the loading bay.

She sat in the corner of the plane the entire ride over, away from the others, moving when Skye had tried to sit down beside her. She couldn't talk to them, she couldn't think, she couldn't even see straight, not until she saw him, not until she knew.

It was just a few hours but the trip dragged out, each passing second allowing the wind to build in her lungs, fill her chest, her arms, her head and she was sure that any minute it was going to drive her mad.

Everything flooded back to her in those few hours, the scent of his skin, the colour of his eyes and the taste of his lips. She went through their conversation, over and over, trying to remember, to grasp onto any hint that could have warned her of danger.

He'd been tired, vulnerable, left in a strange city for the night, but compared to the things they'd experienced, what they did for a living, he'd seemed safe.

He'd been safe... Hadn't he? Surely this was a mistake, wasn't real. It couldn't be real. He couldn't be gone, not her Fitz.

_'Please Fitz, please be alright. I need you to come back to me. I need you to be OK.'_

She continued to call out to him, inside her head, for the rest of the journey. He couldn't hear her, that was impossible, but she couldn't stop herself from trying to reach him anyway.

/-/-/

It was him, lying under a sheet, red streaks beneath his open eyes. They didn't look like his eyes. Fitz's eyes had always been a window to his heart, shining with pain or sparkling with love, dancing as he laughed or flaring with his anger, but these weren't a window to anything and she didn't understand why no one had closed them yet, why they weren't more frightened of the abyss that stretched out behind them.

Briefly, she noted that it might have been because of the liquid, they hadn't wanted to disturb it, but she couldn't seem to grasp onto the thought or comprehend why it would matter. So she closed them, gently, startled by the chill of his skin beneath her fingertips, and no one had protested.

It wasn't until much later that she'd had the sense to wonder if that had been a mistake.

They left her alone and she sat beside him for a long while, feeling like she was in a dream, like none of this was real, numbed from rest of the world.

Her head spun, the little room too big and too small all at once, cold, hard emptiness that crowded around her and it hurt, so much, but not nearly as much as it did when her mind began to wander. It wasn't until her thoughts drifted, to the things she was going to need to do after they took him away, and she realized that someone was going to need to cancel their dinner reservations, that the first true waves of it crashed into her, crushing her like driftwood against a rocky shore.

' _We aren't going to be there,'_ she thought wretchedly. ' _We're never going to go. I'm never going to see him again. He's gone…"_

A sob ripped through her body, then another, and she leaned forward, pressing her forehead into his as the tears rolled onto her face. Her hands slid past his cheeks, taking his head between them and she kissed the space above his nose, his eyelids, his forehead, choking out a desperate plea between squeaks and sobbs.

"No… no, come back." She trembled above him, lips lingering beside his eye before she exhaled a shuddering breath and dropped her cheek onto his, heart twisting at how unfamiliar it felt. He felt  _wrong_. He was too cold, too still. "C-come back… come back… please,  _please_ come back!" She'd do anything, if only he'd warm up, take a breath, open his eyes. "Come back…"

/-/-/

**Present**

"Come back!"

The barrier down at last, she bolted into the empty cell, desperately searching for a hint, something left behind to tell them where he'd been taken. Half of her had hoped that, somehow, she'd be pulled along behind them. That if she had only been fast enough she could have hitchhiked onto whatever that damn thing had used to rip him away from her.

"Fitz!"

He was to far to hear her, but she couldn't stop herself from screaming his name, chest heaving as she realized he was gone, that she couldn't follow him, and her legs gave out beneath her. Kneeling where he'd stood only seconds, she felt tears streak down her face and the world spin out from under her.

What had he been thinking? Why hadn't he run, or moved away or at least made an  _effort_ to escape?

' _Because he doesn't think he belongs here,'_ came a voice from the back of her mind. ' _Because he cares about the people here, about you, and he doesn't think he has anything to lose. He doesn't think he has anything.'_

He had something though. He had  _her._ And he wasn't gone this time, not yet.

After one last sniff, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and rose to her feet, sparks lighting in her chest, catching into a flame.

Fitz thought he was alone but he wasn't, and she was going to find him. Wherever he was, whoever had taken him, however hard she'd need to fight, she was getting him back.

She only wished that he knew that, wished she'd had the courage to tell him that she loved him before he'd been taken away again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for betaing this chapter :D Your help and enthusiasm is awesome


	17. Somewhere Out There

Fitz was in a cell again. Smaller this time, with unnervingly clean white walls and a tiny, metal framed bed on which he was now sitting, staring numbly ahead while the small band of aliens scanned him. Their long, rodlike device passed over each of his limbs, his abdomen, his head, bathing him in purple light and showing readings on the screen beside him. He didn't bother turning his head to look, he wouldn't have been able to read it anyhow.

It was a man now, mauve skin this time but with the same dark eyes as the woman, poking and prodding at him. She had lied, no one was giving him answers, they only took. They took his blood, his hair, pieces of his skin. They jammed their fingers in his mouth to examine his teeth and shone lights in his eyes that made him see spots. Then they peeled off pieces of skin and stuck tubes places that had no business having tubes stuck into them, cameras at the end allowing them to see inside of him or- much worse- grabbers at the end allowing them to take out pieces.

It was a nightmare.

And when they were done, they left him alone, moving onto the next cell in the row. He heard the sound of another door opening, seeping in from under the crack of his own, but he didn't have the energy or the motivation to wonder who else they were visiting.

His fever was back, along with the aching exhaustion, but more than that he was empty. This was it, this was all he had. They were going to keep him in here for the rest of his life, or kill him, or cut him up, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. No one was  _coming_ to stop them.

Tears rolled past his cheeks but he saw no point in wiping them off, of trying to pretend that he was strong, so he left them, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.

He was doomed, and he was so, so alone. The memories from the other man's life hadn't prepared him for this, for this feeling of horrible loneliness. They hadn't prepared him to live belonging to no one. He didn't have anything real to hold onto, only what he'd inherited, memories that weren't his own, a love that would never be returned.

Exhaustion overtaking him, he slid down onto his side, pulling the blanket over himself as he felt the first chill run down his spine.

Maybe they'd given him something, slipped an injection in between blood draws, how would he know? He hadn't been paying all that much attention. This felt familiar though, he'd felt this way back at the Playground and no one had given him anything there. They'd been kind, especially in the end. He hoped they were safe. It was his one consolation in all this, that there was a chance he'd managed to protect them.

They were his friends. That was real, what he felt for them, the love he felt for Jemma, that was  _real_ and if his short time in this universe had ended with an act of love, then at least he had that.

/-/-/

At first, she'd tried to be everywhere. When they first began their search for him, Jemma had found herself needing to be involved in every aspect of it, to know what was happening in every area.

She quickly realized, however, that the most important thing she truly  _needed_ to do was focus. Focus herself and ensure everyone else was doing the same, which meant not distracting them with her perpetual demands for updates.

"We're going to find him," Skye had told her, meeting her eyes with something close to the hot, raging determination Jemma felt withering beneath her own skin. "I promise Jemma, we'll turn the universe inside out if we have to. We're getting him back."

Her friend's assurances hadn't succeeded in making her any less terrified, but they'd been enough to snap her out of the panic that had been driving her erratic behaviour. She'd calmed down considerably, at least on the outside, and she if she'd had the room to feel it, she'd have been grateful for Skye's steady strength.

It was amidst the chaos of people searching, between rushing feet and screens packed with data, that Coulson returned, followed by a familiar Asgardian.

Many of the other agents caught their eyes on her, pausing in their work to peek over, curious, a couple even appeared intimidated.

Jemma was neither of those things, she was furious, a tiger prowling towards them.

"What do you know?" she barked, coming to an abrupt halt just a few feet away. She glared at the woman who stood beside her leader. "Why didn't you come  _earlier?!_ You could have stopped them from-"

"We weren't aware that subject nine was created from one of your agents," lady Sif answered evenly and Jemma narrowed her eyes further, fighting back another outburst.

"You mean Fitz?" she asked, her anger quieting to a hiss. His name was Fitz not subject. "What have they done with him?"

Lady Sif tilted her head, examining her carefully. "You call him after the man he was created from," she noted. "Someone dear to you?" Jemma didn't reply but the other woman must have seen the answer in her expression because she nodded as if she understood and continued. "You believe this to be him?"

Jemma nodded back stiffly, patience rapidly wearing thin. "It  _is_ him," she answered between her teeth, inviting no argument, whatever lady Sif knew. "How are we going to get him back?"

That surprised her. "Then they succeeded," she marveled. "I never thought… It never seemed possible, life is meant to have only one beginning, one end."

"Well obviously there are exceptions to every rule," Jemma said, fuming at the time they were wasting. She was curious, of course she was, about what lady Sif was talking about, but as she stood, speaking in riddles, the clock continued to tick.

The Asgardian sensed her impatience. "Of course, we'll have time to debate what to do with him once we've recovered him from the Olos."

"Our alien friends," Coulson explained beside her. "That's what they call themselves."

"We've sectioned off the area around your planet," lady Sif went on. "No one is coming in or out of the radius between the ground and your moon. They cannot have left the solar system."

Jemma exhaled, a tiny fleck of relief finding it's way through all the turmoil. They couldn't leave, he was within their reach. And there wasn't going to be much of a debate when they finally did find him. Whatever he was, wherever he'd come from, he was Fitz and he belonged with them. If lady Sif, or anyone else, thought otherwise they were sorely mistaken.

"Where do we start then?" she asked, lifting her chin and taking in a slow breath, prepared to do whatever she needed to do.

Lady Sif and Coulson exchanged a glance and her eyebrows rose, the fact that they'd already had a similar discussion becoming readily apparent.

"I think we know someone who might have an idea where they took Fitz," Coulson told her. "He's serving a life sentence in a Colorado prison."

/-/-/

They'd moved him when his body temperature had began to plummet, carrying him into a plastic incubator and covering him with a warm blanket. Then they'd stuck more tubes into him, scanned him again, given him a worryingly wide assortment of brightly coloured fluids and pills.

From the outside he must have looked terrifying, lying within a clear, cylindrical capsule, pale and shaking and drowning in blankets and see-through spaghetti.

He wasn't sure what they were doing, he couldn't focus on what was going on around him long enough to puzzle it out, the moving, colourful aliens a blur against the white walls, their voices muffled and distorted.

"They're trying to keep you alive."

Startled, he managed to turn his head towards the familiar voice, confused for several seconds until he realized what was happening. His fever must have been  _really_ high. Or had he moved on from the fever? He couldn't tell.

"You're going to have to help them you know," she went on, rubbing a slow circle into the clear, solid plastic above him with the palm of her hand and looking down on him with undisguised concern. "You have to  _want it._ "

Her message was familiar. Hadn't one of his captors said something like that as they'd carried him in?  _He has to want to live._ That was it.  _He needs to want it, or we can't help him._

They were helping him then? That was funny, he'd been doing fine where he was, before they'd threatened his friends and snatched him away.

"That isn't true, you were sick there too," she reasoned. "But you got better, why do you think that is?"

' _I don't know,'_ he thought hazily, head pounding from the effort of holding onto a coherent thought. ' _Why does it matter? I'm nothing. Even if I live I have no future.'_

"You have to fight this," she urged, growing in desperation, her fingers gripping the hard plastic above him.

Why?

"N- not real," he gasped, tasting blood when the movement made his lips crack, but he needed to say it outloud. "You're… not here."

"She risked her life for you," the hallucination pressed on, stubbornly refusing to disappear. "Why would she do that if she didn't care? Don't you want to go home? They must be looking for you. They said they'd protect you. She  _promised you._ "

She had, hadn't she? And whatever he was, Jemma was good and kind and she'd keep her word.

What would he do though? If she did? Where would he go?

"The world is still beautiful," she reminded him gently, drawing his attention back to her unbelievably clear shape. "It's big and beautiful and you can be a part of it."

The real Jemma had said that, or something like it. She'd help him, they all would.

"You could be a part of it," she repeated, quiet now, but as determined as ever to make him listen. She leaned closer, gaze running across his face, pleading with him. "You just need to fight this."

His eyes fell on her hand, pushed against the plastic, and he marveled at how detailed it was, how much his mind had remembered to play out in front of him. Laboriously, he lifted his own hand and placed it on the other side of the barrier, matching their fingers together and returning the kind smile she beamed down on him when he did.

Already he felt stronger, the awful chill beginning to thaw, though his answer was still little more than a whisper.

"OK."

/-/-/

Neil Chung sat in the visiting room of the prison, waiting for their arrival.

When Jemma and Coulson entered the room, a small smile appeared on the man's lips and it was obvious that he'd been expecting them.

It didn't surprise her, Fitz had told her about what had happened the night he died, the way he'd known things he couldn't have known, spoken the words in his head before he'd had a chance to speak them himself. Perhaps he was a gifted, inhuman even, or perhaps he'd been bestowed these powers by the Olos.

"You aren't here to kill me this time," he remarked evenly, watching them from behind eyes that shone, sharp and alert.

"I obviously didn't kill you last time either," Jemma remarked dryly.

"You're glad you didn't," he told her, unfazed by her aggression.

She glared back, wanting to smack him. He was right but she hated that he knew it. "Where have they taken him?" she demanded.

Neil shook his head, turning to Coulson. "You have an offer."

Glancing at her uneasily, her leader reached into the pocket of his suit and pulled out folded form, sliding it across the table.

"Your transfer to a minimum security prison," he let him know needlessly. "In exchange for information that will get me my agent back."

"The Olos offered me eternal life," he said, eyes moving swiftly across the page.

Coulson scoffed. "Yeah, but do you think they'll actually deliver? They didn't come for you when we took you in. It doesn't look like your foreign friends care too much about you."

He seemed to considered this.

"No," he said after moment. "They don't." The pages slid between his fingers and for a fraction of a second, he seemed almost wistful. "I wasn't given my powers by the Olos," he told them. "I was born with them. They chose me because of them."

"Chose you for what?" Jemma asked tersely, uninterested in his life's story. She didn't give a damn where his powers had come from or what those monsters had promised him. She wanted Fitz back. "What did you do?"

He sat back in his chair, studying her carefully. Then he smiled, eyes sparkling. "I was a part of a miracle."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapper for being an Asgardian of a beta :D
> 
> Neil Chung has the same name as the character in Fringe he is based off of, though this one has a very different ending than the guy in Fringe. 
> 
> The Olos colours are inspired by the Tosok from Robert J. Sawyer's Illegal Alien. I didn't make them quite as creative as he did, but I figured a humanoid alien would fit better into what we've seen in AoS.


	18. Those Who Foresee Calamity

_A miracle?_ Jemma's teeth ground together and her muscles stiffened, tight with rage.

"You're going to need to explain," she heard Coulson say beside, far calmer than she was.

Neil looked between them, something strangely close to sorrow passing across his face when his gaze swept over her. "I am sorry for your pain," he told her earnestly. "I was only trying to prevent a greater pain. I wasn't lying to you when I said I had saved him."

Saved him? This man had nerve. None of this would have been happening if he had just left them alone.

"The body," she growled, unable to string anything more coherent together.

It didn't matter, he understood.

"It was his," he answered evenly, confirming her suspicions. "Until I removed him from it. Now it's a part of something else, as is he." His mouth lifted in a small smile. "We gave him new life."

Jemma shuddered at the familiarity of the phrase and, beside her, Coulson raised his eyebrows.

"What do you mean new life?" he asked.

"He means a new body," Jemma answered, crossing her arms across her chest.

She'd been right about the fluid, what it was. The stem cells, the hormones, they hadn't been put into it so that they could be absorbed, they'd been part of him, a growing body in a sac of liquid, flaking off debris as it developed. It was a wonder she hadn't recognized it for its composition earlier, that she hadn't known amniotic fluid when it was right in front of her.

"They grew him a new body, put his…" She frowned, not quite believing what she was about to say. "They put his  _soul_ into it, didn't they?" She seared him with a glare until he nodded, unscorched. " _Why?"_ she seethed.

"I saved him-" he repeated, but she didn't want to hear that, not again.

"You let them  _experiment_ on him!" she shouted, shooting to her feet so that the legs of her chair scrapped behind here. "You  _killed_ him-"

"Painlessly," he assured her, remaining in his seat.

"Painlessly?" she cried, incredulous at the sheer nerve this man was displaying. "It wasn't  _painless._ He was in pain for  _weeks_ when he came back. And I thought he was a gone! For a year and a half…"

Her mouth snapped shut and she pulled a long breath in through her nose, forcing herself to calm down.

_This isn't what we came for. What's done is done, right now we need to find out where they took him. We can still make this right._

"August eighteenth," he mumbled, dropping his gaze down to his lap.

Jemma slid back into her chair, her anger left to simmer. "What?"

He couldn't seem to look at her, his expression far away, and he spoke as if he were reading from a list. "Leopold Fitz. August eighteenth, 2017. Shock brought on by severe pain and emotional trauma."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, her voice lowering as a chill ran up her spine.

"Jemma Simmons," he continued, ignoring her confusion. "August eighteenth, 2017. Heart torn apart from a close range shot."

She shook her head. "That- that didn't happen…"

"Clara Oswald," he went on. "September twenty third, 2017. Leukemia. Sam Gilmour. April second, 2018. Strangulation with a metal wire. Addison Montgomery. May eleventh, 2018. Stroke while driving a tour bus. 38 dead-"

"You saw our deaths," Jemma realized with a start. The horror of what he was saying put her anger out like a cap on a candle.

That was what he had meant. Fitz, the others he'd taken, he was saying that they'd already been going to die. It made sense, too. Fitz had had a tail on him from the time his flight had been canceled, they'd found records of him being followed while investigating his death. Enemy agents who very well might have done to him what this man had described.

_Shock brought on by severe pain…_

The story unfolding itself in her head left her sick to her stomach and the world spun around her as she realized what had almost happened.

' _It didn't happen though,'_ she told herself. ' _Fitz is alive and he needs you.'_

She wondered, briefly, why her name had been on his list, and how she was still alive if he hadn't done to her what he'd done to the others. However she pushed aside that thought too, focusing on the present instead.

Neil lifted his head, eyes bright. "I saw all of their deaths," he murmured. "That's why I chose them."

Jemma leaned forward, meeting his gaze with renewed composure. "Chose them for what?"

/-/-/

Fitz was out of the incubator. His fever had returned, but at least now his body was heating itself and his limbs ached far less than they had before.

The hallucination hadn't left yet. She sat on the edge of his bed, an invisible guardian while he wove in and out of sleep, though her voice was sounding further and further away each time she spoke.

"I'm going away soon," she murmured, her hand resting atop of his. Her touch was nothing more than the ghost of a feeling now.

He nodded, twisting his hand to rub his thumb across the side of hers anyway. "I know."

"That's a good thing," she reminded him. She smiled fondly, using her free hand to pass over the short locks of hair stuck to his forehead before leaving a gentle kiss on the warm skin. His eyes closed and he sighed at the faded sensation. "Do you remember what you need to do?" she asked.

Returning her smile, he managed a weak chuckle. "Get the hell out of here."

"Exactly." She patted his cheek approvingly. "Don't forget that. And don't be afraid, you aren't alone."

/-/-/

Jemma and Skye packed side by side, slipping weapons and tactical gear into their twin black packs.

"Resurrection?" Skye marveled, shoving a first aid kit into her bag before turning to Jemma, eyebrows raised. "You're telling me these guys  _invented_ a way to bring people back from the dead?"

Jemma shook her head, slipping her arm through the straps of her own bag and shifting her shoulders to take on the extra weight. "Not exactly. No one actually died, not by their definition anyhow. Their goal is to extend life, not bring it back. They simply provided a new body for their…" She frowned, trailing off because she still wasn't entirely clear on how to comprehend the technology.

"For their soul," Skye supplied, her amazement showing through in her expression. She slipped her own pack on and they started together towards the hangar.

"I'm sure there's a more technical term for it," Jemma objected. "It must be some imprint of electrical impulses, or… or an energy we can't detect yet, or…"

"Jemma," Skye cut her off, grinning in amusement. "It's a soul. They found a way to  _capture_  souls. Like those vacuums from Ghostbusters."

"Sort of," she conceded. "Only they use nanobots, suspended in the toxin we found. They call them soul magnets. When they're set to remove the soul, they kill the body. Everything shuts off all at once. Neil said he doesn't quite understand it… it's beyond our current knowledge of the universe. He had no explanation, but that doesn't mean there isn't one."

Neil. How close had she been to murdering him? How long had he been locked up for a crime he'd only halfway committed? If she believed what he had told her, which, to her surprise, she found she did, he'd only been trying to protect them. And the Olos had tricked him. There was no eternal life for him… or the others. They were simply the initial stages of a trial, never meant to be kept alive. The moment the Asgardians had begun tracking them the Olos had flash forwarded the final phase of the experiment: termination.

They needed proof that their subjects were viable first though, to know that the bodies could hold the souls, and that was what gave her just the smallest scrap of hope. Because Fitz was sick, there was something wrong with him and until they figured out what it was they needed to keep him alive or risk losing him as a data point. And from the information she'd acquired from Neil, they didn't have many data points to loose.

He said the process was imperfect, many were lost in the initial stages and a previous trial had failed entirely. He thought that maybe that trial was the reason they'd released the new subjects back on earth, allowing them to go home, but neither he nor Jemma could understand why they'd take such an enormous risk. Why risk losing one among Earth's massive population?

"Well, soul, cosmic energy, whatever it is, it gave us back Fitz." Skye shrugged. "That's good enough for me."

Jemma puffed out a sigh, unable to feel much relief at the moment. "We don't have him back yet," she mumbled.

"But we will," Skye assured her.

"Yes. We will," Jemma agreed fiercely, her resolve like a stone against the white rapids of her fear. Determination,  _that_ she could allow herself to feel in its entirety. "Now that we know where they are, we're getting him out of there."

/-/-/

His alien hosts seemed much happier now that he was properly awake. The last scan results had set off a chorus of pleased humming and approving nods throughout the small team of teal, copper and silver aliens that had been monitoring him.

They were  _relieved_ that he was alright, happy even, but he had a suspicion that it wasn't because they felt anything warm or fuzzy towards him personally. Something had been accomplished _._ There was a tang of sweet success in the air, celebration, though of course they wouldn't tell him what any of it was about.

It seemed that he was little more than a subject to them, a means to an end. Nothing to pay too much attention to. That had been their mistake, the big colourful whatever-they-weres underestimating the not-so-dumb human.

"I need to use the toilet," he announced, raising his voice to be heard over wall of their indifference towards him. "Hey! Isn't there anywhere for a successful experiment like myself to… er… relieve himself on this bloody ship?"

"Ship?" the teal one, clearly confused. "Relieve what?"

"I think he needs to empty his bladder," the silver one supplied helpfully. He smiled at the others. "That's good, that means his kidneys are working."

"He clearly has no idea where we are," the first one fretted. "Do you think that's a sign of potential damage to his brain?"

"He was unconscious for a long time," her copper colleague explained. "Maybe he thinks we brought him into orbit?"

"It isn't as if we've given him much information," the silver one agreed. "I'm sure he's functioning normally."

For half a second, Fitz found himself distracted by what exactly the meant as  _normal._ Normal for him or for every other human? Surely they must have known about his old wounds, seen the long dead tissue in his brain. Was that still there in this new body? He didn't feel any different, but perhaps he'd been designed to be oblivious to any changes they'd made.

It didn't matter though. Not right then. He had much more pressing matters to attend to (which actually had nothing at all to do with a full bladder).

"Yeah, my head  _and_ my kidneys are working just fine thank you," Fitz put in testily over their chatter, attempting to remind them that he was still in the room. "So could you…? I mean you must have some place where I can…  _you know_. It's getting a bit uncomfortable."

"Grumbly thing isn't he?" the teal one complained.

Fitz bit back a snide retort, letting out an irritable huff instead and sliding off the bed onto unsteady feet.

"Ohh he's walking," the copper alien cheered. "How wonderful."

"I've been doing it for a while now," Fitz muttered under his breath, allowing him to take his arm when his knees wobbled beneath him.

He let his free hand to fall to his side, grazing over the fabric of his plain grey garments and feeling the faint outline of the parts he'd stolen right from under their noses, pieces of his life support system, the spare power source from his monitor, vaguely familiar pieces of technology.

' _I'm going to be doing a little more than walking in a few minutes,'_ he thought, hoping desperately that his half-formed plan was going to be enough to get him out of there.

After that… well after that he was going to have to hope that Jemma and the others really were looking for him.

/-/-/

The quinjet was set to land in less than twenty minutes, but it still felt like too long. The waiting was the worst part, sitting strapped into her seat with nothing to do. It made her feel helpless and it reminded her of the last time they'd gone to get Fitz, of not knowing what they were going to find when they reached their destination.

"I still can't believe he's alive," Mack muttered beside her, half in relief, half what could have been fear or anxiousness. "You sure it's him? It's not some sort of-"

"He isn't a copy," she cut him off tersely. "It's him. I know it's him."

Mack frowned at her tone, but he nodded, accepting her answer. "OK."

They were silent for a couple of minutes, watching the seats across from them as Lincoln amused Skye by playing with the static in her hair and another of their last-minute rescue team levitated a trio of dice a few inches above his palm. The woman on his left had made her entire body invisible, and her chair along with it, testing out her abilities before the mission.

"I guess I really can't write much off as impossible anymore," he commented, bringing the tiniest of smiles to her face.

"I suppose you can't," she agreed.

"Do you think he'll be disappointed that I left SHIELD?" her friend wondered, an edge of uncertainty to his tone.

Jemma shook her head. "We all handle grief differently," she said kindly. "I think he'll just be happy to see you." She paused, chewing nervously on her lip before adding. "Do you think he'll be angry with me? That I didn't tell him the truth about what he was the moment I knew?"

Mack placed a hand on her shoulder, his expression gentle. "I think he's just going to be happy to see you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to notapepper for all your help with this chapter :D
> 
> All of the people mentioned by Neil in this Chapter are from other shows. Clara Oswald is from Doctor Who, Sam Gilmour was a character on Fringe who was Murdered, Addison Montgomery is from Grey's Anatomy. The tour bus crash is a reference to the beginning of The Returned (which is what originally sparked the idea for this story, though I've only seen the first episode). 
> 
> Soul Magnets are also from Fringe. William Bell uses them to come back from the dead. (After giving them to an unsuspecting Olivia in a cup of tea so he 'borrow' her body)


	19. Run

"Is everything alright in there?" the copper alien asked in concern, his knuckles tapping against the door to the tiny bathroom. "Nothing worth reporting?" There was an eagerness to his tone that caused Fitz's nose to wrinkle in disgust.

' _Reporting?'_  he thought, grimacing. ' _Gross, no.'_ These people were less squeamish about bodily functions than Jemma was. It was downright disconcerting.

"It's fine," Fitz answered impatiently. "I just… this'd be a lot easier if you weren't listening through the door."

"Hmm," he huffed, clearly offended. Fitz heard him take a few steps away, though he wished he'd have gone further.

Fiddling with alien technology was tricky, even trickier when he needed to ensure his nosy hosts didn't hear him fiddling with it. Tricky, but not impossible, especially for someone as experienced as he was… or… who remembered being experienced anyway.

The final segments of his device clicked smoothly into place, perfect pieces to a handcrafted puzzle, and a smug grin stretched between his ears. This would show them not to underestimate him, the bloody idiots wouldn't even see it coming.

It took him a few tries, but he finally managed to flush the strange toilet they'd provided him with. (How they had managed to make a toilet more complicated than building an advanced piece of technology from spare parts was beyond him.) Then he washed his hands, tucked his small creation beneath his clothes, took a deep, calming breath and opened the door.

/-/-/

The small rescue team had landed a few miles away from the target site, intent on taking the Olos by surprise.

Jemma was helping Lincoln activate her newest invention, unsuspectingly disguised as a pair of plain black gloves.

"You know, I don't think I'd have thought of this in a thousand years," he mused, flexing his fingers to test out the fit. He wiggled his eyebrows. "These things could be a lot of fun when we aren't using them for missions."

"The possibilities are intriguing, that's for sure," the woman beside him, Violet, added with a smile. She turned to him, reaching out her hand. "Ready Lincoln?"

He chuckled, glancing towards Skye. "Don't get jealous," he teased. "We can hold hands later if you want."

He winked at her and she rolled her eyes, grinning in amusement. "I'm just jealous that you two get to go first."

"We'll give you a turn after we find your friend," Violet told her, shooting her a quick grin.

She extended her hand and Lincoln took it, the fabric of their gloves glowing a soft blue as they touched, and the pair grew serious, concentrating.

"Should we count down?" Violet asked, turning to Jemma for direction.

"It shouldn't matter," she answered. "You should sync even if you don't begin at the same time. Now remember Lincoln, you'll need to keep me  _out_ of the field, so I'll be able to tell you if it worked or not."

He gave her a thumbs up. "I will. Here we go."

A half bubble of static formed itself around him and the others, followed quickly by the group disappearing entirely. One second, Jemma's entire team stood before her, the next they were gone.

Not really gone of course, just invisible, thanks to Lincoln and Violet's combined abilities.

Jemma nodded, her stomach too full of restless butterflies for a smile. "Good," she told them. "That should hopefully get us inside undetected. Once we've disabled the security system of course."

It was an unnervingly simple plan, especially when she considered that they had no idea what was awaiting them in the remote facility once they were inside, but at least it was a chance.

' _We're coming Fitz,'_ she thought, wishing they'd had more time, more information, more  _anything_ than what they'd been left to work with. Wishing she had a guarantee that everything was going to be OK. ' _I'm not leaving here without you, I promise. I'll make this right again.'_

/-/-/

Fitz's alien captor held onto his arm as he escorted him down the hall, but other than that he wasn't restraining him. He likely had a weapon, they weren't dumb enough to leave themselves defenseless, but he was sure that if he was quick enough he could activate his device before he had a chance to draw it.

Nearly certain.

The hall to his room was short though, and he didn't have to time to second guess himself so, gritting his teeth and tensing his muscles to spring away, he swiftly pulled his creation out from under his shirt and tossed it towards the ground, dropping to the floor just in time to avoid the plane of green light that stretched out from wall to wall down the hallway about four feet above the ground, hitting the unsuspecting alien who crumpled to the floor, rendered unconscious.

Laying on his stomach, Fitz stole a moment to let out the breath he'd been holding, shoulders sagging in relief.

"Thank God that worked," he muttered before scrambling to his feet and searching the alien for his weapon.

Some sort of blaster gun by the looks of it. He held it up, wondering briefly what it did before deciding it would be best to move on. Whatever it was, he'd find out if he needed to.

Weapon in hand, he bolted away down the hallway, searching for an exit.

/-/-/

The team had made it inside after Skye had disabled the security system. One of her gifted friends had been able to cover the entrance camera with a handful of loose leaves, levitating them in a swirling pattern that mimicked a strong gust of wind and plastering them over the lens.

Now, within the protective bubble of invisibility provided by Lincoln and Violet, Jemma followed closely behind Mack, her heart in her throat and her muscles humming, prepared to burst into action.

The walls were strange, sloping upward in rounded hexagons that made her feel as if she'd stepped into a gigantic honeybee comb, painted a dull, greyish blue.

"This place is giving me the creeps," Mack muttered beside her, scanning the hallway uneasily.

"Honestly, it is a little unnerving," she agreed, as she peeked through the hexagonal window to her right to see a particularly alarming array of tools which lay scattered and bloody on a long steel table.

She caught a glimpse of a body on the opposite table, dead eyes staring up at nothing, and she had to stifle a whimper.

It wasn't Fitz but it could have been, could still be. He could have been killed already, to be taken apart- worse he could he could be left alive while they did it. They needed to find him. They needed to find him  _now._

The group had stopped to peer inside and Mack followed her gaze, flinching and brushing her shoulder with his hand when he spotted the butchered man.

She heard him suck in a sharp breath, and when he spoke his words were dulled with horror. "Does that mean they've started?"

Jemma nodded, doing her best to hold herself together, though a cold, rotting sense of dread had spread through her like a sickness. "Yes," she whispered. "I think it does."

"How many are there?" May asked quietly.

' _Too many,'_  Jemma thought wretchedly. ' _Too many lives torn to pieces. And it's too late to put this poor man's back together again.'_

Had someone loved him? Grieved when he'd been snatched away? Had he found them again, before these monsters had done this to him? She could only hope they'd had the good sense to welcome him with open arms, to help him make sense of what was happening, to hold him close, to make sure he knew that he was important and that he mattered. That his life  _mattered,_ whatever it was that had allowed it to continue. She could only hope that they hadn't been as blind and foolish as she had been and that she was going to get a second chance to fix the damage she'd done.

"Twenty six," Coulson answered. "Well…" He frowned and for a moment his eyes clouded over, fogged with sorrow at the waste of life. "Twenty five now, including Fitz."

"We should split up," May suggested at his shoulder. "Speed is more important than stealth right now and we'll cover more ground that way. Mack, Jemma, Lincoln and Violet can stay together, the rest of us will go alone."

Jemma was the first to nod in agreement, quickly mirrored by the rest of the group.

"If you find someone and they can walk, keep them with you," Coulson instructed, sweeping his gaze over his team. "If they can't and you can't carry them, call for help."

"Stay in touch," May added firmly. She glanced at Jemma and her expression softened slightly. "We'll tell you if we find him."

There wasn't anything that could have stifled the rumbling storm thundering through her, but Jemma was grateful for the promise and when her eyes met May's she swallowed and mumbled a strained thank you.

Then her friends stepped out of the protective bubble and hurried on in opposite directions, searching for survivors, searching for Fitz.

/-/-/

Finding an exit was more difficult than he thought it would be. The building's unfamiliar architecture kept confounding him and every turn he made seemed to lead to a dead end, or more rooms filled with unfamiliar tools or ominous steel tables, glinting and sterile in wait of the next victim. Fitz knew that, if he wasn't careful, that might likely turn out to be him.

Halfway down the third hallway, the muffled sound of terrified sobbing stopped him in his tracks, diverting his attention away from his search for an escape. He followed it, turning his head to his left, and spotted a boy, no older than sixteen or seventeen, sitting on the floor of a small white room, his knees held tightly against his chest and his face shoved into them.

Fitz tapped the strangely shaped window to draw his attention and the boy's head came up, his puffy red eyes finding the source of the sound and growing round with excitement as he leapt to his feet. He was at the door within a couple of seconds, his hand clutching the glass in desperation to be let out.

"Please, please don't leave me here," he begged, face crumpling at the thought. His lip trembled and his eyes threatened another downpour. "I want to go home."

"I'm not leaving you in there," Fitz promised. "I'm going to open the door and then we're both getting out of this bloody mad house."

He sniffed, still terrified, but clearly reassured by that. "How?" he asked hoarsely.

"There's an electronic keypad," Fitz explained, already sizing the thing up, coming up with a plan of attack. "And I'm rather good with those, not to brag or anything."

"Is that how you got out of your cell?" he asked hopefully. His head tilted as he strained to see what Fitz was doing.

"Not exactly," he admitted, wiggling the cover loose. "But I've done this before."

"You should hurry," he warned, wide-eyed once more. "I think they said that they were coming back soon. They wanted to… ummm… what did they say? They wanted to process their results. What does that mean?"

The words sent a chill down his spine, even though Fitz wasn't completely certain of their meaning.

"Whatever it is, it isn't good," he told him. "But it doesn't matter, you won't be here when they get back."

"Because we're getting out of here," the boy added, and Fitz could hear that he was struggling to sound brave.

"Yeah." Fitz smiled as he continued his work. "And I don't think we'll be staying here again do you?" He chuckled. "I can't even figure out how to work the toilet, and I don't think they have pepperoni pizza where these guys are from."

"Maybe we can find whatever they used to teleport us here," he suggested, still straining to see. "Did you see what it was? Can you use it?"

"They used their last one on me," Fitz told him, because he'd thought of that too. "I overheard them talking about it when they thought I was asleep. They're running from something and they're running out of supplies."

"Oh," the boy answered and he could hear his disappointment, could almost feel it seeping through the door along with his fear.

"That's good though," he said quickly, not wanting him to be discouraged. "It means they have fewer resources to keep us in here." ' _And it also means they might need to dispose of us in a hurry,_ ' he added grimly to himself.

It was a couple minutes but, after a bit of creative rewiring, Fitz managed to get the door open, releasing him from the tiny prison.

"Those extraterrestrial morons didn't happen to let slip where the exit was did they?" he wondered, already hurrying away from the open door, the boy close beside him.

"No," the boy replied and Fitz's shoulders dropped in disappointment. "They aren't  _that_ stupid. They are pretty gross though, did they ask for you to put your poop in a jar?"

"No, they only wanted me to supply them with all the gritty little details as I did it," he told him. "They have absolutely no sense of-"

"Hey!" A shout from their left had them spinning on their heels and Fitz's stomach sank down to his knees as he spotted an alien with her tranquilizer gun ready to fire.

He shifted so that he was between the alien and the boy, eyes on her as he reached for the blaster tucked under his shirt, knowing it wasn't going to be fast enough to stop her but hoping it would at least buy his new friend the precious seconds he needed to attempt an escape.

"Run," he hissed.

It seemed as if he felt the dart in his arm the same moment he pulled the trigger, poison rushing through him as the alien flew backwards, stunned, but quickly rising back to her feet as his legs gave way beneath him and the world slipped away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for editing this chapter and ensuring it was in tip top shape :D 
> 
> Violet is named after a character from an earlier story I wrote called "I Believe You" and since she has the same power, she actually could be the same person. That character was named after Violet from the Incredibles (who also has the same power). Unfortunately, levitation guy doesn't have a name. Although a random name generator has named him Heike. Which is feminine even though I specified masculine so I guess he'd really be Heiko (According to wiki)


	20. What They Found

Jemma stuck close to Mack, finding a few shreds of comfort in her old friend's shadow, but it didn't stop the thing inside of her from clawing at her ribs, knitting anxious knots and yowling at her to move faster, to find Fitz before it was too late.

Still protected by Lincoln and Violet, they crept through the building, carefully peering through windows and creaking open solid doors.

What they found behind the third door set the creature in her chest into a frenzy.

It was a bright, large room with row upon row of metal shelves, stacked up towards a tall ceiling like towers in a metropolis. On the shelves there were jars, neatly labelled in a text she could not read, pieces of human beings suspended in a thick, clear liquid. There were eyes, tongues, livers and kidneys, organized into sets so that each set filled a stack of shelves. A quick count brought her to nineteen. Nineteen people cut up into pieces.

Mack swore beside her but she couldn't speak. Her blood seemed to be draining out her feet and she wouldn't have been surprised if she'd turned whiter than fresh snow. She felt about as cold as snow.

"We should move on," Violet said after a long few seconds. She sounded as if she were struggling not to throw up. "There- there's no one we can help here."

Her head was spinning, but Jemma managed a stiff nod, tearing her eyes away from the sight before her.

"He wasn't in there," Mack mumbled as they carefully squeezed through the door, back to their search.

Jemma's mouth was dry and her voice felt strange as she spoke. "How do you know that?" she asked dully.

His mouth twitched and he shook his head. "He wasn't in there," he repeated quietly.

As they moved on, the hot, wet tickle on her cheeks told her that she was crying but, though her next few breath trembled and wheezed a bit near the end, no one commented.

A couple of footsteps later she felt Mack's arm press into hers and she leaned against it briefly, biting her cheek and drawing cold air over her throat through her nose to suppress the gasp that gurgled up.

They needed to be quiet or they could be caught. And if they were caught they wouldn't be able to help the six people left alive.

/-/-/

When Fitz woke up he was laying on his back in a brightly lit room wearing nothing but a pair of shorts.

And he couldn't move.

Straining his eyes, he blearily managed a glimpse of his arm, stretched out to his side. Thin black lines had been drawn all the way to the start of his hand, segmented like the 'cut here' label on a bag of peanuts.

On his other side, a cheerful grey alien was humming to herself as she set out her glistening steel tool set, saws and scalpels and finely tipped tweezers neatly laid out on metal trays.

His stomach clenched, his heartbeat quickening. This was it. This was going to be the end of him.

"Is he ready?" another silver one asked to her right, about as chipper as his companion was.

"The paralytic has taken effect," she responded, glancing towards him with a grin. "The results have been promising so far. I'm hoping that his are as encouraging as well."

"Do you think then they'll let us move on from human trials?" he wondered longingly. "They're close enough to us in their biology. Maybe-"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," she cut him off, though her good mood didn't waver and she grinned at him. "One trial at a time." She chose a scalpel, catching the tip of the blade under the overhead lights so that a shining star slid up the side of it, twinkling at the end, and Fitz was sure he could  _hear_ how sharp it was. "We should be ready to begin."

They weren't going to put him to sleep then. He wondered if he would feel it, or if they'd made his body numb as well as immobile.

He tried to think of something else, send his mind far away from his body where he could hide until both of them dwindled into nothing. He thought of sunshine bathing his cheeks, the feel of a beachball between his fingers, eating biscuits with Jemma while they chatted and giggled together, her lips freckled with crumbs and her eyes sparkling. All of it was wonderful and peaceful and  _real._ But it wasn't enough to override his horror and as the alien glided to his side to stand over him, lowering her blade towards his skin, fear shot through him from his stomach right to the ends of his fingertips and down to the tips of his toes. If he could have moved his eyelids, his eyes would have been shut tight, but they hadn't even allowed him that.

Then there was a short bang and blood splattered over his chest and across the side of his face. The alien fell from his view and hit the floor with a thud. The other had only a moment to cry out before he met the same fate.

"Fitz?" It was May, her fingers finding the place on his neck just under his jaw, pushing down to search for a pulse.

She blew out a breath of relief before hurriedly working to unstrap him from what would have been his execution table. He'd never wanted to hug her more than he did in that moment and he wished he could speak to thank her. His friends had come looking for him, just like they said they would, and they'd found him. It was sunlight streaking down between rain clouds, golden rays pouring from the sky.

May scooped him up, carrying him for a moment before gently lowering him onto the ground and propping him up against her arm. Her free hand moved to her ear and she spoke over the coms.

"Jemma? I found him." A brief pause as she listened for the reply. "He's alive but he's not moving, I think they might have given him something. They were just about to cut into him."

She gave him a quick shake, but he could only lull limply in her arms, though the thrill of fear and excitement that panged through him with the knowledge that Jemma had come too would have sent him shooting to his feet if he'd had any control of his legs whatsoever.

_Jemma's here, she came for me. She kept her promise._

"Is there some way to wake him up…" May was saying now. "...No, I need him to run, they aren't far behind me." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her expression darken and she looked down at him with a long sigh. "I understand… Yes, I've done it before."

Very slowly, she lowered him the rest of the way to the floor, giving his shoulder a quick squeeze before searching through her bag. She pulled out a rectangular cardboard box and from that she slid out a long needle, uncapping the tip before meeting his eyes.

Fitz knew what it was and as much as he knew that she needed to do it, he found himself struggling to scream for her not to.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, shaking her head in sympathy. "But I need you to get up."

In a single, rapid motion, she brought the needle down like a dagger into his chest, piercing the skin and digging down deep beneath the flesh to pierce his heart.

It hurt like hell and it felt like being hit by the ocean, waves barreling into him then exploding through him and he sat up, screaming before May's hand came up to cover his mouth and she was pulling him to his feet long before he was ready.

"C'mon," she urged brusquely. "The others are this way."

Shakily, he found his footing, and together they sprinted away, stampeding footsteps from the other direction telling him that their enemy was close on their heels. A ball of light rocketed past his ear, colliding with the wall to his left and sending a shower of debris pelting into him. A few speeding pebbles stung his arm, but otherwise he was unharmed.

"Keep running," May barked, slowing and pivoting around so that she could return their fire, narrowly avoiding another blast.

"I can't just leave y-" he began, slowing with her with but she cut him off.

"Go!" she snapped. "I've got this."

Fitz realized that he wasn't going to be much help, painting a target on her. It was him that they wanted, so he did as he was told and scampered away, hearing her shots ring out behind.

/-/-/

He didn't get far before he found Jemma and the others. He couldn't see them at first, they must have had some sort of cloaking around them, but when he'd rounded the corner there'd been a loud gasp and they'd appeared, as if from nowhere.

His gaze fell on Jemma like a the needle of a compass. Their eyes met and time seemed to slow, inching towards a stop.

The relief that washed over her face was more than he'd expected and her breath caught at the same moment his did, their bodies finding perfect synchronicity.

Then she was bolting like a bullet train towards him and it was all the invitation he needed to do the same, colliding with her embrace and dissolving into it. Her arms clamped around his shoulders, reeling him in, and he brought his own up to hold her against him, warmth diffusing through him like hot water. He felt her cheek, damp against his own and she let out a long, gurgling sigh, as if she'd been holding it in for days before burying her face against him.

"How did you-" he started to ask, but he froze as he felt her arms tighten around him in one quick squeeze, then another, and another bringing the number to three.

The world came to a standstill, narrowing into a tiny bubble, big enough for just the two of them.

It couldn't be what he thought it was, he must have been mistaken. She wouldn't-

Another three squeezes, evenly spaced,  _deliberate_ , causing him to pull back, leaving the ends of her arms resting on his shoulders and his hands on her sides as he met her bright, round gaze. She was looking at him like he was the light at the end of a tunnel and the intensity of her expression was like having his soul torn out of him.

And still he was unable to believe that he hadn't been mistaken in her intent.

"Jemma?" he breathed.

His heart thumped against his chest and he saw her swallow, a few more tears finding their way onto her cheeks, but the clock had continued to slow so that seconds turned into years and her pause felt like forever.

At last, she pulled up a weak smile, managing a hoarse whisper. "I love you."

Joy leapt in his chest but he forced it down, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head because it frightened him. It was everything he wanted but he couldn't bring himself to trust that it was real. "Jemma I'm not-"

"Yes you are," she said, louder now, turning her hands to grip his shoulders. "You're Fitz. They brought you back, that was the point of the experiment. It's you in there Fitz."

Was it? How could she be so certain? He wanted to believe her, he really did, but he'd been too filled with doubt for too long and the tangled mess of uncertainty inside of him was not so easily shaken.

His eyes stung with tears and his chin fell to his aching chest. "How do you know it worked?" he whispered.

Her palms pressed against his cheeks, a light, tender touch, and he allowed her to lift his head, sniffing as he saw her gentle smile and the warm glow of love in her eyes. "Because you couldn't possibly be anyone else," she told him softly.

She leaned forward, lightly bumping his nose with her own, leaving their lips less than an inch apart and once again the act of her reaching out towards him was enough for him to reciprocate, eliminating the gap between them in one swift motion.

He hadn't forgotten the way she tasted, how her mouth felt against his, and she obviously hadn't forgotten either because her kiss was as familiar as she was.

Then, much too soon, she was pulling away and the bubble popped, time resuming at its regular pace, as they remembered where they were and who was with them.

Lincoln and Violet had recast their net of invisibility, buying them the few precious moments they needed, but it was well past time to go.

As they moved out, Mack shot him a delighted grin, letting him know that he too believed he was the man they'd lost, but they were off again before either of them could say anything and before Fitz could figure out whether or not he believed it himself.

But his hand was wrapped tightly in Jemma's fingers and it didn't feel as if she were going to be letting go anytime soon and, for just a minute, he decided it didn't matter  _what_ he believed. It was then that he realized that home was the place where you were loved and that he'd finally found his way back there. He could figure out the rest when all of them were safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for betaing this chapter :D 
> 
> The adrenaline needle-thing was from a part in Fringe (and also, as I was told, Pulp Fiction) when Olivia finds herself in a similar predicament to poor Fitz.


	21. Together

They weren't running, no one wanted to risk straying outside the field of invisibility, but the group hurried as fast as they could, sticking close together in a soundless, lump-like herd.

Until the first ball of light from an alien blaster sped by, grazing Jemma's shoulder and Fitz saw her bite down hard on her lip to avoid crying out in pain and surprise.

"I can see you," the Olos told them, his skin was a silver-grey and he was at least a head taller than any of the others Fitz had met. He wore dark glasses over his eyes, the sides of them flashing with green lights, and Fitz guessed they had some sort infrared sensor inside of them.

Mack reached for his gun but the Olos was quicker, shifting his blaster to point towards him. "I wouldn't try that," he warned.

Frowning, Mack lifted his hands to show that he understood and several more Olos appeared from around the corner behind the first, each wearing the same pair of glasses and flooding around them with their weapons until each one of the small team had a blaster pointed towards them.

Cornered, they raised their hands in surrender, the bubble of invisibility dissolving when Lincoln and Violet broke contact, and the aliens moved forward to apprehend them.

Jemma struggled viciously when they tried to pull her and Fitz apart but the Olos holding her pushed a finger into her wound and she cried out, distracted long enough to be dragged back.

"Leave her alone!" Fitz roared, trying his best to elbow his captor until the end of a blaster poked into his chest and he stopped, breathing hard and glaring at them before his eyes met Jemma's and she silently mouthed that she was OK. She didn't look OK. She was still wincing from the pain in her arm, staring frantically at him as if she were in a panic.

Another group of Olos joined them and, to his horror, Fitz saw that they had managed to subdue the rest of his team.

One had her arm around Coulson's neck, a blaster pointed towards his head, and another held May's arm with one pressed against her side. The right leg of May's pants was ripped and wet with blood and most of her weight had been taken on by her opposite side, as if it hurt to stand with the injury.

The area around Skye's eye was swollen, red with the beginning of a bruise, but otherwise she appeared uninjured.

' _I'm so sorry,'_ he thought, his friends' wounds making his stomach churn. ' _I didn't want any of you to be hurt because of me.'_

The sole hostage-less alien, her skin a dark blue, stepped forward, the usual patient chipperness Fitz had come to expect from the beings faded out entirely.

"We would very much like you to come with us now," she said tensely, eyes narrowing as they rested on him.

Fitz was scared, for himself as well as his team, but he stood tall, glaring back at her defiantly. "Let them go," he demanded.

"You will  _not_ give us orders," she snapped. "We'll be killing the intruders after we've questioned them."

"Good luck with that," Skye huffed. She squirmed uncomfortably but her captor only tightened his grip.

"You should not have tried to steal from us," he scolded harshly.

"Steal from you?" Despite the blaster aimed at her belly, Jemma puffed up at that, her eyes blazing. "He's a human being not property, no one can  _steal_ him."

"He belongs to us," the one restraining her said firmly. "We created him."

Jemma scoffed. "You experimented on him. And that hardly gives you the right to-"

"Enough!" he snapped, jabbing her with the edge of his weapon so that she let out a short grunt of discomfort, his hand worryingly close to the trigger. "We'll start with this one."

Fitz felt the jolt of a cold knife in his chest at his words. "No!" he shrieked, struggling fiercely to get to her but held back by a strong grasp on his arms. "No you can't."

"Don't," warned the dark blue one. Her tone of voice hinted at authority and her colleague stopped, turning to her in surprise. "She is linked to him," she explained. "She's helping stabilize the soul-body connection. Don't you remember why we sent them home in the first place? His soul is far from set, he still needs her."

Connected. The man had said that too, the one who'd killed him. Niel. He and Jemma were connected in a way they didn't understand. Could it be true? Was Jemma stabilizing him somehow? He couldn't really see how it was possible, but then again he couldn't really see how him standing there, occupying a newly formed body, was possible either.

"We're dissecting him," the one holding Jemma pointed out. "Does it really matter?"

"I'd like him to be alive when we do," she replied.

The answer seemed to satisfy him and Fitz's insides churned at their plans as he nodded his acceptance.

"You're monsters, all of you," Jemma muttered. She was nearly rippling with fury as she struggled to free herself. "Is that what you did the people whose body parts you're keeping in glass jars?" she spat.

"They would have died far sooner if we hadn't interfered," she dismissed easily. "We gave them more time, and in exchange they will give us forever."

"He isn't going to give you  _anything!_ " she growled.

"That isn't up to you," she repeated irritably. "You've brought a poor rescue team," she taunted. "A handful of humans. You're mice to us."

"Mice with titans for friends."

The alien's heads snapped around at the sound of lady Sif's voice, their jaws dropping in surprise. A small force of Asgardians followed behind her.

"This operation violates our interworld law," she boomed. "Experimentation on sentient beings is prohibited."

"The Olos do not see humans as worthy of interworld law," the dark blue one shot back coldly. "And you aren't in much of a position to arrest us. Not when we have your precious humans as hostages."

"There is no way out of this for you," lady Sif told her evenly. "If you give yourselves up this will be easier on you."

A few of the other Olos glanced between each other uncomfortably, however their leader simply glared back at her. "You can't be serious?" she scoffed. "We'll be in an Asgardian prison for the rest of our lives, whatever we do."

"There are far more severe penalties for the crime you've chosen to commit," lady Sif answered sternly. "You and your colleagues have murdered dozens of innocent people, that will not be taken lightly by our justice system."

At last she seemed afraid. Her mouth twitched and Fitz could see that she was deep in thought, debating her options.

"None of us will be killed," she demanded at last, standing tall as she stared down her adversary. "And our research will remain intact and given to our people to continue it within the boundaries of  _your_ laws."

Lady Sif hesitated and the Olos' leader jerked her head towards the alien holding Jemma, signalling to him silently. He tapped a button on his blaster and lights lit along the sides as it emitted a low hum, charging up.

"This will be my only offer for their lives," she said venomously.

Fitz felt his throat constrict and his gaze darted to meet lady Sif's, pleading with her to stop this before it was pulled back to Jemma. Her face was carved stone but he could see her shoulders had become rigid and her back had stiffened up, a bit of the colour draining from her face. She must have been so frightened, but she was fighting not to show it.

"Very well," lady Sif agreed, after what felt like far too long. "I agree to your terms."

Fitz's muscles uncoiled like loosened springs and he heard Jemma let out a ragged sigh of relief as the blaster was pulled away from her and she and the others were released. The moment they were free she and Fitz leapt towards each other, his hands finding hers and holding on tightly as lady Sif and her team bound the small group of Olos with silver and gold, faintly glowing contraptions that looked a bit like bulky handcuffs.

To his immense relief the wound on her arm didn't look too deep even after that brute had pawed at it and when she saw his eyes lingering on it she smiled, shaking her head to tell that she was OK.

"You didn't really think we came here without any backup did you?" Coulson asked, raising his eyebrows at the Asgardian's new prisoners.

They Olos were fuming, refusing to look at them or speak and any sharp remarks were kept inside of their heads.

Six of the Asgardians led them away, however lady Sif did not follow. After instructing them to take the prisoners to back to Asgard, she drifted towards Fitz and Jemma, stopping only a few feet away and tilting her head curiously at them.

To his surprise, Jemma's demeanor changed on a dime from relief to hostility. Glaring at lady Sif she shuffled so that she was between her and Fitz, extending one arm out in front of him.

"He's staying with us," Coulson told her before Jemma had a chance to pelt out the angry words on the tip of her tongue. He shrugged apologetically. "We're grateful for your help, but you can't take him with you."

Fitz frowned. Why would the Asgardians want  _him_?

Lady Sif looked past him and Jemma, speaking directly to Fitz. "Do you understand what you are?" she asked evenly.

He hesitated. "Sort of… I'm… uh… I'm some sort of clone? But not really, because clones don't remember the lives of their tissue donors, they have their own memories and experiences. My  _body_ is a clone but my… er… my… I suppose you'd call it a soul…"

"That is what the Olos would call it," she said flatly and he stopped, swallowing nervously.

Was she asking him to prove that he was himself? How could he when  _he_ still barely believed it? Did he really think that he was the same person he remembered being? Did he even believe that was possible? What was going to happen to him if lady Sif thought it wasn't?

Beside him, Jemma nudged his hand with her own, her fingers slipping through his, and when he turned his head towards her he was encouraged by the warmth in her gaze. She certainly believed it, or at least she loved him, whatever he was, and it was making his heart swell wonderfully to bask under her glow. He glanced around at the others and he could see by the way they looked at him that they all cared for him too. They'd all come for him, to bring him back home, despite the danger to themselves, and that knowledge, along with the memory of Jemma's three gentle squeezes, was enough to weave together his own, still fragile belief, that he was who he felt he was.

He turned back to lady Sif and lifted his chin, speaking firmly. "I'm not going with you. I belong here, this is my home and I'm not going anywhere."

That he knew right down to his core.

"You understand that you are not meant to exist?" she asked him calmly.

"Yeah, well I do," he replied forcefully, refusing to break eye contact. "We  _all_ do," he added, remembering the boy who he'd helped escape, the one he promised he wouldn't leave here. "And I'll fight you for all of us if I have to."

Lady Sif shook her head. "That will not be necessary." She turned her body, addressing Coulson now. "We freed them as Coulson's team distracted the Olos for us. We are willing to pass on the responsibility of the remnants of this experiment over to you," she told him. "I will expect for you to account for each one and return them to where it is most appropriate."

"You mean bring them home?" Skye asked hopefully.

She nodded. "If that is what is appropriate," she answered simply.

Fitz felt a grin stretch across his face. "Thank you."

She gave him a small smile, staring for a few seconds, curious. Then Jemma's arms were around him, her face nuzzling into his shoulder, and then Skye was holding him too, and Mack, his arms managing to stretch around the three of them. Coulson squeezed his arm fondly and May let her hand rest on his free shoulder.

Fitz closed his eyes contently and smiled as he leaned his head onto Jemma's. He wasn't alone anymore. He belonged to these people, the way they belonged to him and with him. That was something he was sure he'd never stop appreciating because he could never forget how painful it was to have no one. The stark contrast of the love and companionship he felt now was enough to saturate him with chorusing joy that left his knees weak and his head light.

They brought him back on the quinjet, taking the five other survivors with them, and Jemma held onto his hand the entire way there while Mack and Skye took turns shooting him wide grins, the three of them filling him in on what had happened in the time he'd been gone.

That night he ate with his friends and slept in his bed, wrapping his arms around Jemma whose head lay against his chest, chirping away until their endless conversations finally dwindled and her eyes fell shut from exhaustion. He soon joined her, sleeping in his own bed for the first time in what felt to him like weeks but that had actually been much, much longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for your help with lady Sif, as well as the rest of this story :D 
> 
> One more chapter to wrap everything up. It's a bit long, but I think that everything that happens in it goes together.
> 
> Also, I don't think the teenage boy has a name. You can name him if you want :P


	22. The Cabin

Bright banners decorated the room, framed on either side by a rainbow of balloons, and drinks, party snacks, and plates of cake were scattered over top of most available surfaces.

"Welcome back from the dead?" Indicating the text printed across the thickest banner,Fitz raised his eyebrows at Skye who shrugged before taking another mouthful of cake.

"I wanted to go with  _Zombie Party_ ," she told him between bites. "But the rest of the team didn't appreciated my sense of humour, even when I reminded them that it is kind of  _your_ party, so it should be your choice."

"I didn't need a party," Fitz told her. He grinned at Jemma who'd perched herself on the arm of the couch next to where he stood and she grinned back, watching him contently over her drink. "I'm just happy to be home."

"And we're happy to have you home," Jemma murmured. She reached up to flatten a patch of hair on the side of his head, her eyes misting slightly before she shook herself and smiled again though he still saw the months of painful memories just behind it. "It… it wasn't the same without you. Nothing was."

He moved closer, taking her hand and allowing his leg to press against the front of her knee, running his thumb down the tops of her fingers. It wasn't his fault, he knew that, but he still felt as if he'd been the one who'd caused her all that pain and even though a small part of him was glad he had people who would miss him, a much bigger part of him regretted how much she'd suffered. And the time they'd lost. It wasn't fair, an entire year together had been snatched away.

On the bright side, it meant that they had a lot of making up to do and Coulson had granted them a full five weeks of vacation together to start that off. They weren't sure what they were going to do with it yet, but he knew that Jemma had a list of wonders, caves that glowed by the light of a million worms and springs filled with jellyfish that could live forever. He had a few choice destinations as well, but as long they were together he knew he'd be happy.

"Just think of it as a readjustment," Skye said, bringing him back to the conversation about the party and shooting him a real smile. "Like an un-funeral… or…" She frowned. "You know what, never mind the funeral thing. That's just depressing. Forget I said that. Today is a  _happy_ day, we should celebrate."

Jemma's mouth twitched and she ran her fingers uneasily along the side of her drink before taking another sip of it, a shadow running across her face. She still hadn't said anything about that day, or what came after, and he wasn't in any hurry to push her into talking about it, though he knew that it'd remain a thorn in her heart until she did.

Skye was right, this wasn't about remembering sad times, it was about celebrating the good ones to come. He was back home, with the people he loved, and surely soon everything would go back to normal?

And yet he couldn't deny that things were different. Things had changed in the time he'd been away and every day he discovered something new that he'd missed. Some things were little, small advances in technology that he hadn't been around to experience, but others seemed a lot bigger, like Mack leaving SHIELD or Coulson promoting someone to replace him (Pao had taken the place left further down the ladder. She was skilled, but still very inexperienced.)

Jemma had given up her online science show quite abruptly after his 'death' (for lack of a better word). She'd been the one to start it but it had been something they'd mostly done together and she'd admitted a few nights before the party that it'd been too difficult for her to continue it without him.

"Actually," Fitz said slowly, his eyes never leaving Jemma's bright gaze, though he spoke to both her and Skye. "I think I a readjustment is exactly what we need."

Jemma blinked at him before smiling and giving him a small nod. Her hand found his and she rubbed his fingers with her thumb. "I think Fitz is right," she agreed.

"It sounds like you need to go to the cabin," Skye told them matter-of-factly. She plopped down onto the chair across from them, retrieving her plate and slicing off a large chunk of cake with her fork before chomping down on it.

"The what?" "Come again?" They asked in unison.

Skye swallowed her cake, resting her fork on the plate. "You know, the cabin they sent me to when I first started making earthquakes."

They exchanged a glance, still baffled.

"Why would we need to go there?" Jemma asked.

"Yeah, I don't think we'll be needing a Hulk proof cabin for this Skye," Fitz objected. "I'm still a normal human, the Olos didn't give me superpowers." He turned to Jemma, eyes narrowing. "They  _didn't_ give me super powers… right?" As hard as he tried, he couldn't keep the hopeful note from his voice.

She chuckled fondly and shook her head. "No, you're completely human I'm afraid."

"That's too bad," Skye grinned impishly at him. "I think you'd have fun with super powers." Then she frowned, remembering something. "But why couldn't he go out in the sun then? Humans can do that."

"They made him a new body," Jemma explained, glancing questioningly at Fitz to ensure she wasn't saying anything that would make him uncomfortable.

He couldn't really say he was  _thrilled_ with losing his old body, between the sunburns and the constant infections this new one was a bit of a nightmare. But Jemma had said that would pass soon enough and he had no secrets from Skye, so he smiled at her, encouraging her to continue.

"He has new skin, new organs, a new immune system," she went on. "They managed to speed up the growth process incredibly- for the most part he's physically the same age he was a year and a half ago- but it seems like they couldn't account for the problems all new humans experience. His skin had never been under the sun before, nor had his eyes, and they hadn't adjusted to it yet. And he'd never been exposed to bacteria or viruses, his blood was completely lacking the antibodies most of us have already developed."

"Which is why I've had to get about a dozen shots these past few weeks," Fitz added grumbly, remembering the bombardment of needles. "I even got a shot for the  _chicken pox_."

"Those are awful to have as an adult," Jemma reminded him sympathetically.

"I guess a short pinch is better than being sick for a week," he conceded.

"But that wasn't what was making him sick before," Skye put in, still a little confused.

Jemma hesitated, looking uncertainly between Fitz and Skye before puffing out a breath. "No," she admitted. Her lip shook and when she spoke next her voice was so low he had to strain to hear. "No, that was us." She rose to her feet, her gaze downcast, and placed her drink on the table. "I- I think I may have left something on in the lab," she said shakily. "I'd better go… I'll be back soon."

She started for the door but Fitz caught her arm and she stopped, shoulders rigid. "Jemma, I'm not angry with you," he promised gently. "I'm not angry with anyone," he added to Skye, who nodded to show she'd heard though she continued to stare at Jemma in concern. "Well… except maybe the Olos… but not  _you_."

"I know," Jemma sighed. She turned around, taking a step towards him and smiling fondly before pecking a kiss onto his cheek. "I really will be right back," she told him.

He brought his hand up the side of her arm, rubbing her shoulder and meeting her gaze, trying to figure out what she was thinking. "I know," he said.

He watched her leave, wishing he could understand what was making her so upset.

"She just needs a bit of time," Skye said reassuringly. "A lot of really messed up stuff has happened in the past year and a half, she's probably still trying to make sense of it all."

Fitz signed. "Yeah, I know how that feels. Even if I was the world's strangest embryo for most of it. Sometimes..." He paused, feeling a shiver run up his spine as the familiar thought resurfaced. "Sometimes I wonder if it actually worked... If I really am who I think I am or if... Well if I'm just a very good copy of him."

"No one thinks you're a copy Fitz," Skye told firmly.

"Sometimes I do," he admitted, his voice low.

Skye rose to her feet, stepping over so that they stood face to face before draping a hand over his shoulder. "Go to the cabin," she suggested again. "It'll help."

/-/-/

Their send off at the base had been a warm one. Skye had made them cupcakes for the road, decorating them with sprinkles shaped and coloured like smiling faces and even May's face had matched them when they waved goodbye.

Coulson had practically confiscated their cell phones and told them not to bring their computers.

"You won't have any internet out there anyway," he told them as they pulled out their various electronics and placed them in the bag he'd brought, just for the occasion. "There's a SHIELD computer and a phone with a secure line in the cabin, but the connection is only for emergencies."

"Like if the world is ending," Mack put in jokingly.

Skye rolled her eyes at that. "Yeah, like we'd interrupt your vacation for  _that_ ," she teased, dismissing the imagined apocalypse with a wave of her hand. "I think we'd be able to handle it. We'll just leave Pao in charge of the lab while you're gone, any disasters can go through her."

The young scientist's eyes widened in alarm. "Wait… I can't… you're joking right?" she stammered.

"She is," Jemma assured her, smiling at her friends. "We'll see you all soon."

Skye hugged her, then Fitz, lingering a bit longer on the engineer to tighten her squeeze around his shoulders. When she pulled back to give him one last scan Jemma saw something of the same relief and gratitude pouring from her expression that she'd felt herself these past few days, though she saw none of the lingering sorrow that she'd felt clinging to her like a stubborn burr.

After a moment, May tilted her head towards the hangar doors. "C'mon you two, let's get you to the cabin. You can eat the cupcakes on the way."

/-/-/

Their first evening there they sat together on the wooden steps, watching the daylight turn to inky blue over the shining lake. As the sunlight faded, Fitz seemed much more comfortable, even taking off his glasses to stare out across the water, allowing Jemma to see those gorgeous eyes she'd missed so much.

And they looked  _right_ this time, not empty the way they'd been when she'd gone to identify him over a year ago, but swimming with laughter as he joked about the bullfrogs that were singing a croaking chorus out to what he insisted on calling the lady frogs. She'd hadn't realized, before then, how much of him was in his eyes and she wondered if they really were somehow connected to that thing humans had called a soul, whatever it actually was that made him Fitz and her Jemma and that had allowed him to move from one body to another.

She understood the biology of his personality, of his thoughts. She could map the parts of his brain that told him what he felt, held onto his memories, allowed him to speak or to understand what was said to him. And she even knew why his eyes reflected his emotions so brilliantly, tiny changes in pupil dilation and facial expression affecting the way light moved through them, giving way to the remarkable shifts. But she still didn't understand what it was they had taken out of one body and put back into this one, as many long hours as she'd spent poring over the research. She hoped that someday she would, and she wasn't going to give up anytime soon, but for now she was content to have him back with her.

Mostly content. As happy as she was for them to be together, she couldn't seem to shake the ghosts of the time she'd thought she'd lost him forever. She'd gone too long grieving to simply slip out of it, and the sadness lingered even though, to her immense frustration, she wasn't entirely sure what she was sad about.

The lost time? Regret for the pain she'd had to go through? For the pain she'd put  _Fitz_ through because she'd been too stubborn to see what was right in front of her? Whatever the reason she wished it'd go away. She wished she could just enjoy the fresh air and the sound of his voice through the quiet.

"Jemma?" He must have realized something was wrong, because there was a note of concern in voice when he spoke. "Is everything alright?"

To her horror, the simple question made her eyes sting and she shook her head, drawing a cool breath over the back of her throat in an attempt to keep her composure.

Fitz's hand found her shoulder, his concern deepening, and the contact drew her forward, her arms coming up around him and her face pushing into his shirt when he opened his arms to let her in, burrowing into the fabric as if she could stop the tears she felt about to spill out if she managed to press herself tightly enough against it.

It didn't work. She felt safe, with him holding her and it made her body relax rather than lock up, the springs inside her chest uncoiling and allowing the trap door to open and her tears to rush out in a startling gasp.

He didn't say anything and neither did she but one of his arm tightened around her shoulders while the other came up to stroke her hair and as he leaned his head against hers she was sure she heard him sniffle. Then he had buried his face into her hair and he was weeping right along with her, shuddering in her arms as she shuddered in his.

So they cried, together, until the sun had set and the moon was rising in the sky and fireflies shone like fairylights between the bushes. They cried and they held onto each other, neither one knowing exactly what was wrong, though the firm embrace and the twin streams of tears seemed to be exactly what they both needed, a long, messy release from the things they'd both been holding in.

It wasn't until a breeze brushed past her bare arms, sending a shiver through her, that they finally awoke from the trancelike state they'd found themselves in and she pulled her head back from his chest, looking up to his tear-streaked face that shone when it caught the moonlight, staring back at her questioningly.

He grazed his knuckles over her cheek as he watched her, slowly, over and over in a steady, soothing pattern, quietly struggling with something tied to the tip of his tongue.

"I've missed you," he said at last.

Her mouth twitched up in a small smile and she cupped his cheek against her palm, feeling his skin stretch up as smiled back.

"I've missed you too."

It wasn't everything, but it was the start, and the words seemed to tumble out after that, conversations that hadn't realized they needed to have flowing between them like rivers and by some miracle she found the words to communicate the tangled mess of emotions inside of her and he found a way to do the same.

When at last they went inside, tired of fighting off the cold and the insects, she felt as if a new link had been formed between them, another knot in the vast net that bound them together, and she was certain that they were stronger for it.

/-/-/

The next morning, Fitz awoke to a wonderful smell of flour, oil and blueberries, cooking on an open stove.

Smiling contently, he rolled onto his side, letting his hand rest on the fabric of the sheet that hand been ruffled and folded on itself as Jemma slept. It wasn't warm anymore, and he guessed that if she'd had enough time to start cooking she'd been up for a while, but it still held the memory of her laying beside him, her hands gliding over him as she familiarized herself with his new skin and he refreshed his memory of hers.

For a while, their conversations had halted, as they reacquainted themselves with each other's bodies, their lips meeting and their skin brushing, filling them up with incredible sensations which they followed together until they were both amazingly saturated with them.

And then, after holding each other in silence for a short while, their conversations had sparked back up again, their eyes struggling to remain open as they continued their talk into the night, giggling from time to time as they moved on to happier subjects. There were universes they could fill with things they still needed to say to each other and not all of them were sad.

She'd been so beautiful. She  _was_ so beautiful, glowing with it as if her life were a star and her sense of wonder and excitement the corona around it. He could hear her, just outside and down the short hallway, pattering around the kitchen, filling the cabin with her presence.

The memory of her arms around him was still fresh, and as incredibly real as all his other memories of her were. In her embrace, he felt her love for him, knew that he belonged.

He wasn't alone anymore and it was fantastic.

When his stomach grumbled at him, he made himself get up, feet finding the fuzzy carpet as he stood before they moved on to the chilly wooden floor, and followed the smell into the kitchen.

"Good morning," he greeted when he arrived at the entrance, having paused for a moment to watch her before he did. There was a spring to her step as she wove about the kitchen and he was sure he'd heard her humming something until his footsteps had alerted her to his presence.

"Good morning," she replied sunnily, turning around to shoot him a cheery grin before getting back to what she was doing. "I was up early so I decided I'd make us some breakfast."

She seemed excited about something, her voice raising a little near the end the way it did whenever she was, and she was doing something with what looked to be a piping bag over the frying pan.

It was clear that she was making pancakes, but he didn't understand why she needed the icer.

"You know they aren't actually cakes," he teased, starting towards her with a chuckle. "You don't need to put icing on them."

Although, now that he thought about it, it wasn't a  _horrible_ idea.

She hummed an absent response, absorbed in whatever it was she was doing, however at his approach she spun around, rising on her toes in alarm. "Wait, no! You can't see them, not yet." Piping bag in hand she hurried over to him, steering him by his shoulder with her free hand until he sat down at the table, narrowing his eyes at her in confusion. "It's a surprise," she explained. "You need to wait."

Surprise pancakes? Did she really think he couldn't smell them?

He shook his head apologetically. "I'm sorry Jemma but I already know they're pancakes. I suppose it's possible they did something to my sense of smell," he added, attempting to console her and realizing that it  _would_ be pretty neat to have heightened olfactory power.

"Of course they're pancakes," she dismissed, shuffling back over to the stove. "That's not the surprise."

"It isn't?" Once again, he found himself confused. "What's the surprise then?"

She picked up the spatula, using her body to shield the pan from view as she flipped whatever surprise pancake was on it. "You'll see in a minute," she said, only a little distracted by what she was doing. Her voice returned to morning sunshine. "How did you sleep? I thought the mattress was actually quite comfortable."

"I did too," he agreed, unable to help himself from craning his head in an attempt to see around her. "I didn't move around too much did I?"

"If you did I slept through it," she answered, carefully using the spatula to transfer her creation to large, white plate. "Close your eyes," she instructed, swiveling around to face him.

He did as instructed, feeling his stomach tickle with excitement. "Do I get a kiss with breakfast?" he asked hopefully.

It wasn't as if he'd been lacking them lately, but he still couldn't bring himself to take any gesture of affection for granted. A hug, a kiss, a lingering touch, he soaked it all in like a fresh paper towel, and Jemma seemed to be holding onto the same philosophy, as hungry as he was for that connection.

"Well," he heard the smile in her voice. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add that too."

Her lips touched his, briefly but long enough to spread a pleasant warmth through his chest and the way her fingers slid behind his neck in unmistakable affection made him melt in the best way possible. Then he heard the clatter of a plate being placed on the table and she gripped his shoulder.

"Alright, you can open them now," she chirped.

He did that and what he saw made him glow with delight.

"That's actually really impressive," he praised, examining her creation as she retrieved her own plate and sat down beside him, watching him fondly.

"And why do you sound so surprised about that?" she teased. "I  _am_ rather impressive."

"And you're very modest too," he added jokingly, shooting her an affectionate grin before looking back at his plate. "So how did you… with the piping bag?"

"I learned how to do it from a very helpful website," she explained, watching him nervously though he wasn't sure why. "I spent a great deal of time browsing the web while you were…" her gaze flickered away before darting back again and she appeared even more uneasy. "When you weren't here. And I needed something to distr- to occupy my time." she corrected herself quickly. "I've also gotten very good at souffle and I've perfected the my frittata...Perhaps I should have done that instead...I'm not sure it turned out exactly the way I wanted it to," she worried, studying it critically. "It's a bit cartoonish… But I've never done a monkey before it was too…" She trailed off, her eyes clouding. "...I wanted to focus on other animals," she decided after a moment.

Fitz felt a lump form in his stomach. He didn't like it when she talked that way about the time he'd been gone, when he was reminded of the time they'd lost and how hurt she'd been by it, but he knew that pretending it didn't happen wasn't going to make either of them feel any better, so he forced himself to let go of the awful feeling and focused instead on the present, on what she was showing him now.

He looked back at his cheerful pancake monkey, a capuchin actually, neatly crafted so that it stared back at him in varied shades of golden brown, and wondered how good her other animals must be if she was calling this cartoonish.

"Jemma this is incredible," he told her warmly, smiling when he saw his words light her up again. "What other animals have you done? "

"Oh, well my dragonfish is particularly detailed," she answered, a slight blush pinkening her cheeks. "And Skye says her favourite is my blue ringed octopus, she likes that I use blueberries for the rings, though they do turn out looking more like spots than rings…"

"I'd like to see that someday," he said cheerfully. His voice softened, growing thick with an emotion he couldn't quite place. "All of it… everything I missed. I want to see all of it."

"I'll show it to you," she promised, giving his arm a firm squeeze, what he was feeling, whatever it was, reflecting back on him in her gaze. "I  _want_ to show it to you. Everything I wanted to tell you, to talk with you about, to do with you and anything you want to know."

"That sounds like a lot," he kidded, but he stacked his hand over hers and squeezed back.

Her free hand came, cupping his cheek and she kissed him, slower this time, pushing her forehead against his in a light headbut before pulling away, leaving him buzzing and fuzzy. "It is," she murmured. She scrunched her nose, eyes sparkling. "I'm sure you'll still be hungry after that," she tilted her head towards single pancake. "Why don't we see how many animals we can get through before I run out of batter?"

She stood up, skipping back to the stove, and Fitz took a bite out of the monkey pancake before following her. It was as delicious as it was beautiful. Leave it to Jemma to improve upon  _pancakes._  She made everything better, the sky bluer, the sun brighter, the rain fresher, the entire world was wondrous simply for having her in it and he was so grateful that he got to share it with her.

And he knew that she felt the same way, she'd told him last night, singing out her heart in the words she'd spoken, though she hadn't needed to. It played without her carefully chosen lyrics each time they were together and he'd always known what it meant.

Still it had been wonderful to hear her say it.

He watched her for several minutes, marveling at how she crafted shapes from the batter, until she offered to teach him, allowing him to take over, adding blueberries for spots and eyes over his shoulder.

And so together they made pancakes, and filled the world with goodness, and they lived happily ever after.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to notapepper for you help with this chapter and this story :D And for showing me that pouring is not the same as poring. Poring, the word I never knew I never knew.
> 
> The ending is a reference to the Fringe episode Brown Betty. Ella ends the story Walter tells (after fixing the ending) with "And together they made goodness and they lived happily ever after. The end." I just replaced goodness with pancakes (same thing right :P?) 
> 
> Also I'm pretty sure there's a post on tumblr about how Fitzsimmons would totally make those crazy animal shaped pancakes together. People really can do amazing things with pancakes! You should look it up.


End file.
